


MiniFills and Suchlike

by taispeantas_laethuil



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Alternate Universe- Daemons, Amnesia, Backstory, Community: dragonage_kink, Elfiness, F/M, Family, Fluff, Gen, Humor, M/M, Multi, Politics, Slavery, Snark, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-15 20:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 35
Words: 39,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3460502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/pseuds/taispeantas_laethuil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Help, I've fallen into a fandom and I can't get up!</p><p>(All of these assholes are too much fun to write, and this kinkmeme business is not helping.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Six Degrees of Seperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Fenris is at Skyhold, and has a chat with Dorian about the fact that their families are made of suck.

Fenris had been intending to stay as far away from the magister as possible, for Varric's sake. The dwarf had made it very plain that his patience had been worn thin over years of tagging alongside himself and the abomination after Hawke, and that he was hoping to never hear another such argument ever again.  
  
"And if you absolutely have to talk with him, try to stick with something you'll both agree on, like how great alcohol is," Varric advised. "Also, he's an Altus, not a magister."  
  
That seemed like hair-splitting to Fenris. It also seemed as though the magister lived in the library, which meant that he saw more of the man than he wanted to: reading was a hard-won skill, and one he was loathe to let atrophy.  
  
As far as magisters went, this one was almost tolerable. He spent a lot of time complaining about the caliber of the books in Skyhold, bemoaning the idiocy of the Venatori, and preening, but most of the time he was either engrossed in his reading, or muttering to himself as he took notes. There was only to occasional spell to make Fenris' skin crawl, and were the world a different place, he would have been no more annoying than the birds the spymaster kept directly above them.  
  
It helped that House Pavus had been in conflict with Danarius far more often than not, and that he had fond memories of watching his father crush three of his former master's apprentices in a quick succession of duels. Still, he was wary, and it was impossible for him to not be aware of the magister's presence whenever they were in the same space. And, every so often, he would look up to find the magister watching him, looking conflicted.  
  
For Varric's sake, he waited until the Inquisitor had taken the dwarf out on Inquisition business before confronting him.  
  
"You have something to say to me, I believe," Fenris said, startling the magister from his book.  
  
"I-" The magister began, and then sighed. "Possibly. Do you want to hear anything of your sister?"  
  
"I don't have a sister," Fenris stated flatly.  
  
The magister snorted. "I understand the sentiment completely."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yes," the magister replied, though he didn't elaborate. "Do you want to hear it anyway?"  
  
"What is it?" Fenris asked.  
  
"She's become my father's apprentice. Just shortly before I left Tevinter, as it happened."  
  
"Ah. I suppose it is not a surprise, considering her ambitions," Fenris said. "Though given her previous affiliations, I'm surprised House Pavus was the one to take her on."  
  
"Because of the blood magic."  
  
"Because Danarius was an enemy of your father," Fenris corrected him. "Does House Pavus truly disdain blood magic so much? I always thought you simply kept appearances better."  
  
The magister's reply was several seconds of surprisingly bitter laughter.  
  
"You're more right than my father would ever admit to," he said in response to the bemused expression on Fenris' face. "A fact which I'm sure your sister has used to cement her position."  
  
"Are you concerned my sister is influencing your father?" Fenris asked.  
  
"Not really. There are worse deals my father could make to learn blood magic than in exchange for an apprenticeship, after all."  
  
Fenris sat there, considering the shape of the thing the magister was talking around. The magister himself bit down on his lower lip for a moment, and then said. "Was that all? I'm still trying to find out where our biggest magisterial concern came from."  
  
"For now," Fenris allowed. He didn't get very far before the magister called after him.

"There's a boy called Cole you might meet around Skyhold: pale, human, terrible hats. He's... new to the world. He asks a lot of questions. Not too long ago he asked me about slavery."  
  
"Oh?" Fenris asked, unable to tell where this was going.  
  
"I brushed him off. It was- it's become obvious that I don't know as much about it as I thought I did. I sent him to the Inquisitor, but that doesn't mean he won't ask you. If you tell him that his questions aren't helping, he'll probably leave you alone. He means well. Do try not to stick your hand through him or anything, though? I'm not too sure what would happen. To either of you."  
  
Fenris remained where he was, until he realized that both himself and Pavus were waiting for the other to end the conversation.  
  
"I shall consider your advice," Fenris said.  
  
Pavus inclined his head, and returned to his reading. Fenris did the same.  
  
He had questions, but they could wait until Varric returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "I know, we get a lot of requests like this, but usually it involves Fenris getting over himself and learning to like Dorian, which makes me uncomfortable, because Fenris is the oppressed person in this situation. So, any meeting with Dorian fic that doesn't paint Fenris as unreasonable or petty for absolutely fearing and despising him. Ideas: Dorian has heard of Fenris, Dorian is horrified by the cruelty visited upon Fenris, Dorian knows of Fenris's history or family. Perhaps Fenris has also heard of Dorian, or at least his family. anyway, Dorian's very aware of the fact that he's talking to someone who has suffered terribly over the failings of his country."
> 
> Original fill can be found here: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13275.html?thread=50609627#t50609627


	2. Varric's Adoribull Romance Novel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: the book Varric wrote about Dorian and the Bull has finally come out.

Varric didn't actually say anything about his upcoming book, but it was pretty obvious from the way he kept smirking at them when they were out in the field- like he had a punchline set up and waiting for just the right opportunity- that it was going to be the one about them. He wasn't really sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, the novel as a concept was great to tease Dorian with. On the other, he'd tried reading some of Varric's 'smutty literature' and it was not his best work.  
  
Other people were much less conflicted, which meant that by the time he arrived at the library in Skyhold there was a waiting list two feet long and not a single copy to be found. He added his name to the list, and resigned himself to not knowing for a little while yet.  
  
Then he ran into Dorian, and it obvious that he had gotten one of those copies, and had already powered straight through it. It was also obvious that whatever else it was, it had hit close enough to the mark that his was walking around with a slightly wild-eyed expression, and when he saw the Bull he started blushing furiously.  
  
"Did he get it right?" the Bull asked.  
  
"Get what right?" Dorian asked.  
  
"Us. The passion. The way you lit the curtains on fire. My rippling physique."  
  
Dorian's eyes narrowed slightly, and the Bull felt a slight sense of foreboding. "Well, he certainly spent a great deal of time describing your rippling bosoms."  
  
"Um."  
  
"Though, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure 'rippling' was the correct word. More like 'bouncy' or 'pert'." Dorian smirked, and reached inside his robes. "This needs to be returned before the end of the week, but I think you'll find chapter sixteen particularly enlightening."  
  
He tapped the book against the Bull's chest- which was not bouncy at all, really- and when the Bull had taken it, he _sauntered_ away, still slightly flushed.  
  
The Bull watched him go, and then dutifully turned to chapter sixteen. At first he was very confused- which of these people were supposed to be him? They were both-  
  
Then he laughed, and flipped to the front of the book, where Varric's editor made him list his 'dramatis personae' to confirm his suspicions. Sure enough, the two lead characters were "The Dawnstone Dragon", the leader of an all-woman mercenary company called the "Dragon's Horde" and runaway magister, "Lady Dorina of House Pallas".  
  
Then he turned back to chapter sixteen. For someone who wasn't interested in women at all, Dorian had surprisingly good taste in lesbian bondage scenes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a prompt which says, in essence, 'post your unfinished snippets here'! And I have no idea which prompt this was supposed to be for, so I responded.
> 
> Original fill: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13429.html?thread=51708277#t51708277


	3. Special Delivery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Halward Pavus has purchased M!Lavellan as a sex slave, which, for Dorian, is the first sign of real trouble. For his part, M!Lavellan was born done with this shemlen shit, and is only growing more and more done with every passing day.
> 
> So, every standard warning regarding sexual slavery applies in terms of referenced events, though no onscreen rape or violence occurs in this fill.

The first time he saw Dorian he noticed him, partially because he was his self-proclaimed owner's son, and also because he was the only one to have anything remotely resembling an appropriate "what the fuck is wrong with you?" reaction to his father's sex slave purchase.   
  
They didn't see each other again for some weeks, and when they did it was only because Mahanon was hiding. Yes, hiding. He was hiding from the man who had raped him like, eighty times, and was probably looking to have done it eighty-one times before the end of the night. Shocking behavior for a First, but with his magic bound there really weren't a lot of options open to him besides hiding and stalling.   
  
"You mean he's actually..." Dorian trailed off, looking ill. "Maker I- I didn't expect him to-"  
  
"Have sex with the sex slave he purchased specifically for sex?" Mahanon finished for him.   
  
"Well, no," Dorian admitted. "That's very much against his principles."  
  
"Well, if its against the magister's principles!"  
  
Dorian frowned "You were born free then, I take it?"  
  
"Yes." It was on the tip of his tongue to add _What gave me away?_ but even Mahanon thought that might make things worse. It was kind of fun to watch the human squirm in discomfort, but Dorian was clearly getting his footing back by now.  
  
"Where are you from? Solas?" he asked.  
  
Mahanon considered his answer. "The clan wanders around a lot. We're generally around the Free Marches, though."  
  
Dorian was suddenly thrown off balance again. "The Free Marches? Like, Kirkwall?"  
  
"Well, we try to avoid Kirkwall. It's a bit of a shithole."  
  
"Yeah..." Dorian said. "Well, I've got things to do, if my father asks I'll say I saw you by the stables earlier."  
  
Mahanon hadn't even known they had stables, but that was where he next saw Dorian. Actually, he was kind of dragged there by one of the matronly women that seemed to run the slave portion of the estate.   
  
"Thank you, Verlissa!" Dorian nearly sang. "I'm sure I'll have better luck with someone this pretty on my arm."  
  
The woman rolled her eyes. So did Mahanon.   
  
"Get into the carriage, please," Dorian said to him, and there was something cracking around his voice that made him comply without comment.   
  
They were outside of Qarinus' city limits when Dorian turned to him and said, in the fakest casual tone he'd ever heard "So, I've found your bill of sale."  
  
"Oh?" Mahanon asked.   
  
"Yes. It does indeed say that you're from the Free Marches. It was also sandwiched between records from when Father apparently had a man I was involved with transferred to Vol Dorma and instructions to conduct a blood magic ritual to... change me."  
  
"Uh..." Well that didn't sound good.   
  
"I like men," Dorian said suddenly.   
  
"Okay?"  
  
"As in sex."  
  
"Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept, as you might recall."  
  
Dorian smacked himself in the face.   
  
"...is that somehow important, asked the male sex slave who was purchase by a man in order to have sex with him?"  
  
"Oh, it's perfectly acceptable so long as you confine your indiscretions to slaves and put on a show with an acceptable woman and produce an heir. Which I was not inclined to do."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because I like men, exclusively," Dorian said, speaking very slowly. "Women are fine, they're just not for me."  
  
"I mean, why would that be necessary. You're human- it's not like you have to keep your population stable or anything. I can't sneeze without hitting, like, eight of you."  
  
Dorian opened his mouth, closed it again, and then sighed. "There are all sorts of justifications for it, but honestly, I agree with you. Why anyone should care is beyond me, let alone why my father would..."  
  
Dorian trailed off, and looked out the window.

"Wait," Mahanon realized. "Are we escaping right now?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"That's a terrible idea."  
  
Dorian stared at him. "Surely you don't want to stay with my father?"  
  
"No, I really, really don't," Mahanon assured him. "But we're in your father's coach, and I'm pretty sure the driver has heard everything we've been saying."  
  
"No, he can't," Dorian said with a dismissive wave. "He's the corpse of some poor sod who washed up on the beach this morning, dressed in the appropriate livery, and spritzed in lavender oil to disguise the smell."  
  
"...what."  
  
"Hi! I'm Dorian, and I'm a necromancer," Dorian said, sticking out his hand. "Also, I like men."  
  
Mahanon took it gingerly, as he was pretty sure he was touching a crazy person. "How are you maintaining that spell?" he asked. "The amount of control necessary to mimic the natural movements of a person well enough for a corpse to pass as living alone has to be draining."  
  
Dorian preened, and launched into an actually pretty interesting explanation involving the way necromancy involved the flow of time, and how the old Imperial Highway was littered with the bodies of the slaves who built it which tended to act as a signpost for him. Then he cut himself off with "You actually understood a fair bit of that didn't you?"  
  
"Well, I didn't study at one of your fancy Circles, but I am my clan's First," he drawled.   
  
"I must confess, I don't know what that means," Dorian said.   
  
"It means I'm the next in line for the position of Keeper. Or I was, at least," Mahanon said.   
  
"You're... Dalish? Is that the right word here?"  
  
"It's the right word everywhere."  
  
"And your Keepers are your mages?"   
  
"They lead the clans: every clan has a Keeper. They are all mages, though."  
  
Dorian laughed hollowly.   
  
"Uh..."  
  
"So, you're a mage."  
  
"Should I have lead with that?"  
  
"Why am I surprised?" Dorian asked the carriage's ceiling. "He's already crossed 'slaves can only acquiesce, not consent', and 'slaves coming from outside the Imperium didn't have any choice in the matter' and was apparently preparing to leap over 'blood magic is the last resort of a weak mind' so why wouldn't he cross that line?"  
  
"Are you just now realizing that your father's a piece of work?"  
  
Dorian stared at him in silence for more than long enough for Mahanon to deeply regret his words.   
  
"Actually, yes, that's pretty much what's happening," he admitted. "So! I assume your magic is being repressed somehow?"  
  
"Well, I'm not sure about the specifics, but I would guess that has something to do with these cuffs that zap me every time I try to take them off."  
  
Dorian waved his hand and the cuffs fell off.   
  
"Seriously?" Mahanon demanded.  
  
"You're welcome," Dorian replied.   
  
"So is there a plan here besides the undead carriage driver?" he asked.  
  
"We're going to Minrathous, where we'll find a ship to take us to the Free Marches. You get to reunite with your clan, and I get to be somewhere that's not here. Is that agreeable?"  
  
"That's the most agreeable thing anyone's said to me that entire time I've been in this country," Mahanon said, nodding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "So there have been some awesome AUs where Lavellan is gifted to Dorian as a slave. I want something similar with a twist;
> 
> It's not Dorian's pleasure that Lavellan is purchased for, it's Halward's. Whether its to prove a point to his son about sating one's desires discreetly, or a mage!Lavellan is purchased as an apprentice/assistant with 'benefits', Dorian is appropriately disgusted ...Until he starts falling for the elf."
> 
> Original fill can be found here: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/14317.html?thread=53905389#t53905389


	4. Shark Tank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vivienne and Dorian celebrate the ascension of Leliana as Divine Victoria I by having a spirited discussion about mage politics.

Dorian could find no fault with the Inquisitor's endorsement of Leliana as the next Divine. She wanted sweeping change, reform on a grand scale: freedoms for mages, and end to the Templars and their lyrium leash, wider acceptance for non-human Andrasteans. It did not surprise him when the Inquisitor's support decided the Chantry, and he rather thought that Leliana would be as good as her word.  
  
"Still, it's a bit disconcerting, isn't it? A Divine with enough spies to tell you what you had for breakfast and where you shit it back out again?" he asked.  
  
"Doesn't your Divine drink baby blood to read people's minds?" Sera retorted, which was certainly a valid critique.  
  
He was very hungover the day they arrived in Val Royeaux for Leliana's ascension. The sun spilled through the Serraultine glass and refracted off the crystal chandelier, spilling rainbows upon rainbows around the room as the Victoria I took her place as the White Divine.  
  
The whispers started almost before they'd left for the soiree, and by the time they'd actually started the after party he'd heard some variation on the question "What does the Tevinter think he's doing here, anyway?" no less than seven times.  
  
_I'm here to celebrate the biggest breath of fresh air Andrasteanism has seen since the whole religion started, you miserable brood of politicians._ He was going to say it out loud the next time someone questioned his reasons for being here, mark his words.  
  
"You're so tense, darling," Vivienne said, stepping smoothly between himself and the nearest gaggle of hens staring at him. "Oh, I knew we should have brought the Bull with us."  
  
There were a lot of things he could have said to that. There was the truth, that the Bull was uncomfortable around quite this much Chantry, the fact that he'd left the Qun making his unease worse rather than better. There was the quip, that the Bull had been disappointed to be denied an reason to wear the coat she'd designed for him.  
  
But there was also the fact that she'd insinuated that he couldn't control himself without having the Bull fuck him stupid every few days, and he was not in the mood to ignore it.  
  
"The lack of a ready dance partner is the least of what is hindering my enjoyment of the festivities," he told him.  
  
"Oh, but it's so easily remedied," she told him. "One need only to ask."  
  
Right. Like he was going to cheat on the Bull by having a fumbling quickie with some masked nobleman so far up himself he'd smell like his own arse.  
  
"Why, Madam de Fer, would you care to dance with me?" he asked. He phrased so it sounded less like an offer and more like a response to one of her own.  
  
“Why I would be delighted!” she replied. “How kind of you to offer.”  
  
The current dance was winding down, so they spent a few moments smiling insipidly at one another until they took their places for the start of the next.

“And how do you measure our Divine against yours?” Vivienne asked, once the dance had started.  
  
“Her Perfection has been Divine for nearly five hours, and doesn’t appear to have assassinated anyone yet, which would place her at a disadvantage to His Perfection,” Dorian replied.  
  
“Your Divine assassinates people personally?” Vivienne asked, as though he’d newly shared that information. “How barbaric. _Our_ Divine has agents.”  
  
“Ah, yes, the mysterious Left Hand,” Dorian mused, as though he’d never gotten drunk with the former one on multiple occasions. “Have you put your name forward for the position yet?”  
  
“What makes you think I want my name put forward?”  
  
“Oh come now,” Dorian chided. “Let’s not insult my intelligence by pretending I would underestimate your ruthlessness.”  
  
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
“I’m sure that you do. You’re a mage, born in a land where those in power would see you locked away out of sight, and yet here you stand, a valued adviser to the Empress, a high-ranking member of the Inquisition, and easily one of the most dangerous people in the room in ways which have nothing to do with your talents as a mage.”  
  
“Why Dorian, people might grow to think you admire me if you continue to flatter me so.”  
  
“I do hope you credit me with more imagination than that,” Dorian retorted. “The facts hardly count as flattery.”  
  
“Well don’t keep us in suspense, darling,” Vivienne said, as though he might have forgotten that they held the attention of the room. “What do you imagine?”  
  
“I imagine that if you’d been born in Tevinter you’d be a very formidable Magister by now.”  
  
“A Magister? Dorian, your imagination _is_ lacking, if you truly believe I would not be Archon.”  
  
Dorian laughed, because the ease with which he could picture that was _terrifying_. His laughter was cut short when Vivienne continued. “I would rule your country with an iron fist, positively dripping with blood, with a bevy of slaves kept nearby in case I required a fresh supply.”  
  
It took Dorian a moment to think of a suitable reply, not in the least because one of the nearby women looked about ready to faint and needed to be helped into the arms of her dance partner.  
  
“Then I think you understand why I might wonder what your plans are now,” he said at last. “Given all you accomplished before, only a fool wouldn’t fear what you might do now that you no longer need permission to be great.”  
  
“And only a fool would fear you, given that you seek permission for things which belong to you by rights,” Vivienne replied. “It is to your benefit that you were born amongst the magisters and malificars in Tevinter- you’d have done yourself an injury struggling against our Southern Circles.”  
  
“Oh my dear, we both know that I wouldn’t have been allowed the freedoms to injure myself,” Dorian reminded her. If she was going to bring up the sins of his country, then he could damn well remind the room of her own complicity. “I’d have been made Tranquil, or attracted the attentions of one of your more brutish Templars, or been sent to Kirkwall.”  
  
“And if you were fortunate, it would have happened in that order.”  
  
They were silent for a long time after that- long enough that Dorian was beginning to suspect that the band was avoiding the end of the piece in an effort to ensure that they finished their conversation in public.  
  
“Would you like to know the difference between you and I?” Vivienne asked him.  
  
“I wouldn’t dream of denying our audience your opinions.”  
  
“I am a realist. I understand the importance of order, and that there is a price to pay for keeping it. You, on the other hand, are an idealist. You would see order disrupted, and hope that those previously constrained by it will rise to the responsibilities their new freedoms demand of them.”  
  
The song ended. He bowed; Vivienne curtsied; no one left the dance floor.  
  
Instead, Vivienne looked directly at the Inquisitor and the new Divine, before she had the last word. “And I find myself in the unfortunate position of hoping you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one I stuck under the ['post your snippets here'](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13429.html?thread=54640501#t54640501) request.


	5. First Class I: Best Reunion Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Snarky!Lavellan from [Special Delivery](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3460502/chapters/8500606) becomes the Herald of Andraste (to his eternal disappointment) and reunites with Dorian (not to his disappointment at all).

It took a bit of doing to get to the Free Marches- they were left behind by their ship in Llomerryn, were nearly press-ganged in Antiva, and Nevarra was just fucking creepy- but eventually they made it to Wycome. The elves in the city's alienage were on good terms with the local Dalish clans, and it didn't take him long to learn that Clan Lavellan was nearby.   
  
That was where they parted ways. Lavellan had a grand total of three humans in it- an elf-blooded woman and her two kids- and Dorian would either feel out of place or be made to feel out of place. Probably both. Dorian, meanwhile, found the idea of being, in his words 'a wandering vagrant' to be a bit not good.   
  
He'd be lying if he said that he didn't have regrets about parting, and that most of those regrets would have to do with moments where he'd be looking at Dorian and suddenly have the urge to kiss him. He'd also be lying if he said those moments weren't followed by overpowering panic because kissing lead to _other things_ , and sex? Sex with a human? Sex with a human male? Sex with a human male who looked a lot like Halward Pavus because he was the man's son?  
  
Even that first thing was beyond him at the time, and would be for quite a while yet. So he went his way, and Dorian went his own, and he didn't expect to meet up again.   
  
Then, about two years later, the sky fucking exploded and Mahanon woke up in chains with a glowing hand, because clearly Fen'Harel had woken up and devoted himself solely to that task of making his life as convoluted as possible.  
  
\---  
  
Mahanon's response to seeing Dorian again was to yell "What the fuck are you doing here?" which, if nothing else, was more articulate than Dorian's reply, which was a kind of 'bwuh'-sounding noise.  
  
They stared at each other for a moment before, you know, demons, and then Dorian said "Help me seal this up, will you?"  
  
No fucking duh. That was kind of the point of his existence right now.  
  
No sooner did they close the rift than Dorian rounded on him. " _You're_ the Herald of Andraste?"  
  
"No I'm not!" Mahanon said, exasperatedly pointing to his face. "Do I look like the Maker is high up on my list of deities to worship?"  
  
Behind him, Cassandra made a disgusted noise.  
  
"No offense meant!" Mahanon yelled, his voice echoing in the Chantry.  
  
"So, you're the one they're calling the Herald of Andraste," Dorian corrected himself. "That must get annoying."  
  
Thank the Creators for Dorian and his appropriate responses to the catastrofuck that was his life. "It's so incredibly annoying, Dorian, you have no idea."  
  
"Do you know what's causing this?" Dorian asked.   
  
"Besides the fact that humans are weird?" Mahanon asked. "Not that there's anything wrong with being human."  
  
"Well, I meant more along to lines of 'do you know how the mark of yours works or do you just wave your hand and hope for the best' but if you'd like to discuss the sociopolitical implications of a Dalish elf being declared the Herald of-"  
  
"No! No no no. No," Mahanon said. He'd already taken the Dorian Pavus Guided Tour of Andrastean Thought once, and that had set him pretty much up for life. Also, the fewer people who tried to talk to him about being Andraste's anything the better. "And also no, I have no idea how this works, no one has any idea how this works, we have one semi-expert on the Breach who figured that 'breach opens up and demons pour out' was related to 'oh yeah, one elf fell out of the breach as well' and we've been running with it ever since. How's your life been lately? And also, because you didn't really answer me the first time: what the fuck are you doing here?"  
  
"I'm here to try and prevent Alexius from making a terrible mistake and allying with a cult of Tevinter supremacists known as the Venatori. And I got here too late, as it happens. Bit of a funny story, that."  
  
"Really? Because that sounds it would be a terrible story that ends with everyone dead or bitter."  
  
"Well, it's funny, because the only reason I'm late is because Alexius warped the fabric of time to arrive here before me."

Mahanon considered that for a moment. "Please tell me Alexius isn't the guy you were working on time travel with."  
  
"Very well, I won't."  
  
"Great! Time travel! That can't possibly make the end of the world worse!" Mahanon cried, throwing his hands up in the air. "I thought you said that kind of magic was theoretical? And impossible!"  
  
"It _was_. But then the Breach opened up and... well, you're a Spirit Healer. You must have noticed the difference."  
  
"Yeah, pretty much to the point where I'm not doing much of any healing anymore, spirit or otherwise," Mahanon admitted. "How's your magic doing?"  
  
"Well, I'm not going to be summoning an army of the undead to do my bidding any time soon, that's for sure," Dorian said with a shrug. "But apparently, when one door closes, the Breach opens up the possibility of time travel. But the magic Alexius is using is highly unstable, and it's unraveling the world. Just look at the temporal distortions around the rifts in Redcliffe." Dorian's eyes flicked behind him, and he added. "I don't suppose any of your companions is that semi-expert you mentioned earlier?"  
  
Mahanon turned around to find Cassandra, the Bull and Varric regarding them with various facial expressions on the spectrum of 'confused' to 'entertained'.   
  
"Oh, right," Mahanon said. "Guys, this is Dorian Pavus, one of a grand total of two good things to come out of the Tevinter Imperium."  
  
"What's the other thing, proper hygiene? Indoor plumbing?"  
  
"One of a grand total of three goods things to come out of the Tevinter Imperium."  
  
"Dare I ask whether proper hygiene or indoor plumbing got the axe?"  
  
"You know what," Mahanon said, turning back to Dorian. "I'm trying to make you look good. Work with me a little."  
  
The Bull laughed, which cut off whatever protest Dorian was going to make.   
  
"Out with the joke, Bull," Mahanon said.   
  
" _Bull_?" Dorian asked quietly. "Please tell me that's a nickname."  
  
"Well, I was going tell you to watch out, because the pretty ones are always the worst," the Bull explained.   
  
"But I'm the prettiest one here!" Mahanon protested.  
  
"Well you're certainly the worst," Dorian retorted.   
  
"Which makes me the prettiest, clearly," Mahanon argued.   
  
Cassandra's disgusted noise sounded weird when it was echoing around the empty chantry along with some muffled giggling.  
  
Dorian sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "How long have you been standing there, Felix?"  
  
"Well I didn't want to intrude!" Felix said, with an unnecessary amount of glee as he stepped out from the shadows. He peered at Mahanon, open and curious, though without the patronization a lot of humans had. "Are you Dorian's... friend- the elf who helped him when he left Tevinter? Levelland? Leveling?"  
  
"Lavellan," Mahanon corrected him, before turning to Dorian to ask "You told him about me?"  
  
"Felix is a friend- one who's committed to helping us with his father," Dorian said. _Like I was_ he did not need to add, especially when he could (and did) say "Also, the sentence 'And I know that because I accidentally slept in the Grand Necropolis' required some explanation," instead.  
  
Cassandra made her most disgusted noise yet to date.  
  
"I say, all you all right?" Dorian asked her. "Do you require some sort of lozenge?"  
  
If Cassandra made any kind of reply to that, Mahanon couldn't hear it over the sound of his own giggling.


	6. Leveret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cole comes to Dorian for advice.

Cole found him while he was taking a bath, which, sadly did not even rank among the top ten most embarrassing activities Cole had found him partaking in.  
  
“Dorian,” he said plaintively, his voice echoing in the emptiness that was the Skyhold bathhouse just shy of midnight. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
“I rather think you just did,” Dorian pointed out.  
  
Cole wavered uneasily, his outline just visible on the other side of the screen Dorian had pulled around his tub out of habit. Dorian sighed. “You can come in, Cole. I’m quite sure my virtue is safe with you.”  
  
Cole did not enter, but rather blurted out “What if I’m not for women?”  
  
“How do you mean?” Dorian asked, for clarity’s sake. It wasn’t too long ago that he’d thought the boy had come to him in near hysterics because he’d accidentally killed a rabbit only to find five minutes in to the conversation that he was actually upset over the first Cole’s dead sister. He’d like to avoid that sort of thing in the future.  
  
“I mean like you aren’t for women,” Cole confirmed. “Like I’m for men instead, maybe.”  
  
Dorian sighed again, because this was not the sort of conversation they could have on different sides of the screen, and Cole was clearly not comfortable with having it with a naked man either.  
  
“Give me a moment, Cole, and I’ll be right with you,” Dorian said, standing up with another sigh and reached for his towel. There was a slight rattle of the screen’s frame as Cole hung a fuzzy bathrobe off of it- not his bathrobe.  
  
“It’s for you,” Cole said.  
  
All right, apparently it _was_ his bathrobe. “Thank you, Cole.”  
  
He dried himself off and then wrapped himself up in Cole’s present, uncorking the tub so that it would drain out while they spoke.  
  
“So what’s the problem, exactly?” he asked as he pulled back the screen. “You can’t expect that Varric would disown you for it, I hope.” If he did expect that, it probably had more to do with Dorian’s experiences than anything in Varric’s head. It _better_ have nothing to do with anything in Varric’s head.  
  
“Not like that,” Cole assured him. “He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t think I was wrong.” The last word came out sounding more uncertain than the others.  
  
Dorian frowned. “So, not exactly wrong, per say, but..?”  
  
“He expects things. He assumes. And he’s not the only one. The Iron Bull brought me to Marguerite. Blackwall thinks I will be interested in girls after I become interested in food. People expect me to grow in ways I don’t know can.”

That sounded to Dorian like there was a bit more to it than just realizing that women weren’t for him.  
  
“Is it the expectations that are bothering you in general, or just the specific one about liking girls?” Dorian asked.  
  
“Well, none of them are fun,” Cole said. “They press and they push and I don’t want to go but I don’t want to disappoint either.”  
  
While he had no doubt that what Cole felt was more intense, he still had some idea what that felt like.  
  
_Anything to make him proud. Anything._  
  
“Listen, Cole,” he said. “If you’re growing in ways they didn’t anticipate, it might take a little bit of time for Varric and the others to adjust. That’s their problem, not yours, try not to let it push you anywhere. Understand?”  
  
Cole nodded.  
  
“And don’t feel like you need to do this all at once. Figuring yourself out is an involved process under the best of circumstances, and you don’t have those.”  
  
“Neither did you,” Cole said earnestly. Between him and the Bull, Dorian could almost grow weary of how much care and attention were paid to his issues.  
  
“Ah, but I have persevered through my circumstances, which is why you have come to me for advice,” he said. “And, presumably, because I have some experience with not being for women.”  
  
Cole nodded sheepishly.  
  
“If you like, I could come with you as you told people,” Dorian offered. “Would that help?”  
  
“It might. I don’t know. We could try?”  
  
“Yes, we could.” And then if anyone reacted badly he could threaten to light them on fire. Or thwack him between the horns, whichever.  
  
“The Iron Bull might enjoy that,” Cole remarked, sounding amused.  
  
“He might,” Dorian allowed, shoving all thought of the Bull carefully away lest they turn in an improper direction.  
  
Cole frowned at him, and Dorian realized that he was doing it too- assuming that sex was the sort of thing that Cole shouldn’t want, and pushing him away from it. But that was probably not the case, if the conversation they were in the middle of having was any indication.  
  
“My apologies,” he said. “Was there… someone in particular, who made you realize that women aren’t for you?”  
  
“There’s a man. A boy. An adult, but he’s younger than the real Cole would be,” Cole explained.  
  
“The _first_ Cole,” Dorian corrected firmly. “Hmm. Well, as I said, there’s no need to do things all at once.”  
  
“I can’t even talk to him,” Cole complained. “I try, but the words get stuck.”  
  
“Ah, now that _is_ the sort of problem Varric is more qualified to help you with,” Dorian said. “I’m afraid most of my romantic encounters have been decidedly unromantic. Talking was not a big part of the proceedings.”  
  
“I would have to tell Varric,” Cole said.  
  
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him that he could talk to Varric without mentioning the gender of the person involved, but he disregarded it. That was the sort of tactic more suited to Tevinter than Skyhold.  
  
“And if you want my help with that, I’ll be there,” Dorian promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, which can be found with the original [here](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13275.html?thread=50550235#t50550235): "Varric and Cole have a really adorable father/son kind of relationship and i love it to bits. Cole has a cute friendship with Dorian too and i have this headcanon that Dorian is kind of a mother hen with Cole - Like if Cole is more human then he makes him eat his vegetables. when Cole refuses to get rid of his hat, he gets him a new one. Dorian tries to convince Cole to cut his hair but Cole refuses so he just tuts and tries to style his hair away from his face instead. Dorian tries to teach him how NOT to wear his clothes backwards and lectures him when he puts himself in danger . - that sort of thing.
> 
> \+ Dorian denies that he acts like this when Varric points it out but eventually admits it and co-parents Cole with Varric  
> ++ Uncle Blackwall  
> +++ Bad influence Sera ("Dorian...Sera said [insert really inappropriate sentence here]. what does that mean?" "Festis bei umo canavarum.")  
> ++++ Everyone in Skyhold acknowledge them as Cole's parental figures"
> 
> There was less Varric than the OP wanted, but I'd had this conversation in my head for a while now, and wanted to share.


	7. Dirth'ena Enasalin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Dalish decide that they need a spy. 
> 
> Or: *shoves F!Lavellan* Hey guys, here's my main inquisitorial squeeze!

It was all because of the Blight.

The Dalish had no troops, but they were still obliged by their treaties to give aid. Most clans were small- they sent a handful of hunters, twelve at most. Clan Lavellan was not most clans: twins were common, especially when their mother had been born into the clan, and they were always welcoming to city elves looking to escape the shems. She was a twin, and had given birth to twins: her father had been an actor in Halamshiral, before he joined the Dalish.

She left her children in her brother’s care- as Second, he would be busy, but not so busy as to not be able to keep tabs on two children on the cusp of adulthood; her father told them stories about the Night Elves, the rebel Fereldan group whose tale had been popular in Orlais around the time he left. The Keeper named her War Leader, and she set off for Fereldan with fifty hunters and their First.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been named War Leader: there were bandits in the Marches, skirmishes between escaping Circle Mages and their Templars that the Dalish kept being dragged into, and mobs of human men drunk on their self-importance. The position of War Leader was like that, taken out when there was conflict but never bothered with otherwise. But it was the first time the war last longer than a fortnight. It was the first time the war had actually been a war.

It took her nearly three years to return home, with the entire eight of them who survived. She barely recognized her children; they barely recognized her, but they knew her father should have come home with her, and had not. They mourn, but only briefly- the Keeper had died while they were away, and her brother was not equal to the task of keeping the clan running. He turned the position over to Deshanna with little fanfare.

She spent the next month running herself ragged, trying to build up their food stocks once more and pretending to not be avoiding her children, until Deshanna pulled her aside.

“It was not your fault, da’len,” she said. “We didn’t know what we were heading into.”

“We should have known,” she replied. “Why didn’t we know? There were refugees fleeing from Fereldan through the Marches, we should have heard something!”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But there’s nothing to be done for it now.”

“And next time?” she demanded. “It wouldn’t take another Blight to wipe us out. We can’t let this happen again!”

For a moment they stare at one another, Deshanna perched on a barrel of sorghum while she paced in front of her, like she was fifteen and trying to persuade the Keeper that she was ready for her vallaslin all over again.

“No,” Deshanna said at last. “No, you’re right. We can’t.”

Officially, Clan Lavellan has named no War Leaders since the Blight. There have been conflicts, of course, but they were not wars, they knew the difference now. Unofficially, of course, she just never put the responsibility down.


	8. Dies Irae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dorian is the Inquisitor.

“You are of Tevinter, if I’m not mistaken,” Cassandra remarked.  
  
Dorian let out a sigh. He supposed it was probably better that they get this unpleasantness out of the way sooner rather than later.  
  
“You are not mistaken. I’m Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous.” That was the last place in Tevinter he’d had what might be termed a residence, at least. He leaned towards the woman in an imitation of a bow. “I’m not a magister, I do not practice blood magic, and I, personally, do not own any slaves.”  
  
“You, personally?” Solas asked.  
  
“My family owns slaves- always treated them well too, or so I recall.” Not like he had the slightest bit of control over what his family did or did not do.  
  
He could feel Solas’ eyes narrow, but Cassandra spoke instead. “And what business did a Tevinter have at the Conclave?”  
  
Personal business, as it happened.  
  
“I came for the wine,” he said glibly. “I had cause to meet a mage from the Circle at Kinloch Hold some years past, and she had wonderful things to say about the spirits the Tranquil brewed down here.”  
  
Cassandra made a disgusted noise. “Why should I bother expecting an honest answer from you?”  
  
That stung a little- not in the least because she might be his only hope of not being executed. “Well, I rather thought we had a moment of understanding when I offered to disarm earlier.” Not that he couldn’t have done plenty of damage without the thin, poor-quality staff he currently had clutched in his hands, but it hadn’t seemed prudent to remind her of that fact, then or now. “I did agree to come with you after all.”  
  
“Yes. And now you are squandering the goodwill those gestures might have earned you.”  
  
Dorian rolled his eyes. “We do have a common cause,” he reminded her, looking up at the sky instinctively.  
  
That was a mistake, because of course he wasn’t looking up at ‘the sky’ so much as ‘the hole therein’. The Breach, that's what they were calling it: a tear in the Veil, large enough to blot out the sun, out of which came a multitude of demons, centered upon the charred remains of a peace conference where hundreds if not well over a thousand people had died. They thought he was responsible for it. Worse, they expected him to be able to fix it with a wave of his hand- literally!  
  
_Blessed Andraste, bride of our Maker…_

“Dorian,” Cassandra called.  
  
He forced himself to turn away. If he stayed like that for any longer he’d get stuck.  
  
“Would you believe I came here as a pilgrim?” he asked. It was a serious question, and thankfully the other three seemed inclined to treat it as such.  
  
“You count yourself among the faithful?” Cassandra asked.  
  
“I believe in the Maker. I believe in Andraste. I don’t much believe in your Chantry- or mine, for that matter. Not that any of that is either or there,” he explained. “I have a friend who’s very ill.”  
  
“I was under the impression that the Urn of Sacred Ashes was removed from the Temple before the Chantry reclaimed it,” Solas said.  
  
“That’s what we’d heard,” Dorian said. “But it was always possible that we’d heard incorrectly. Or that the ashes were only ‘removed’ if you lacked the funds to retrieve them. I was hoping for- for anything really. Except for the world ending. I wasn't hoping for _that_."  
  
He managed not look up at the Breach this time, staring down at his hand and the Mark of foreign green energy enveloping it instead. He gave himself a shake. He should keep moving- first rule of survival, really, never stay in one spot too long.  
  
Not that his survival was a likely option at this point.  
  
“Felix,” he said as they returned to their trudge up the mountaintops. “My friend’s name is Felix Alexius, his father is Magister Gereon Alexius, and they live in Minrathous. It would be of immeasurable comfort to me, if one of you could write to them on my behalf.”  
  
“I’ll handle that,” Varric said. “I’m good with words.”  
  
“Thank you,” he replied.  
  
“Though, it’d bring _me_ 'immeasurable comfort' to know whether or not you’re innocent,” the dwarf added.  
  
Dorian sighed again. “I don’t remember what happened, b-”  
  
Varric laughed. “That’ll get you every time. Should have spun a story.”  
  
Cassandra made a disgusted noise. “That’s what you would have done.”  
  
“It’s more believable!” Varric protested. “As less prone to result in premature execution.”  
  
“Yes, because I’m sure lying could not possible harm my already tenuous position in the slightest,” Dorian scoffed. “And as I was saying- I don’t know why anyone would do this. Or how, in the case that this is just the world’s worst cock-up ever and not a deliberate act.”  
  
“Do you think that likely?” Solas asked.  
  
“I can’t fathom why anyone would want to destroy the planet, so, it certainly makes sense to me,” Dorian replied.  
  
“There have been many cults over the years who have sought the world’s end,” the elf pointed out.  
  
“And they had absolutely no means to do so, hence why they’re called ‘cults’ rather than ‘religions’.”  
  
He thought he heard Varric laugh at that, but he was a bit distracted by the way a shade was charging straight for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, which can be found with the original fill [here](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13429.html?thread=51997813#t51997813): "Because I haven't seen Inq!Dorian yet. Maybe he went to the Conclave to let people know about the Venatori threat. Maybe he went for the wine.
> 
> \+ After Haven, Dorian finds it fitting that he's set out to repair Tevinter's mistakes, even the ancient ones."
> 
> I debated about whether or not to post this here, because there is a greater than zero chance that this will turn into some kind of sprawling epic some day. But it won't be any time soon, and there's also a pretty good chance that if I do write the whole game with Inquisitor Pavus, I'll change a lot of what's here. So, enjoy.
> 
> EDIT: Whelp, I did it. Behold my entry for the 2016 minibang: [Returns](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8122084/chapters/18618430)


	9. First Class II: Worst Reunion Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the ballad of Snarky!Lavellan from [Special Delivery](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3460502/chapters/8500606) and the first installment of [First Class](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3460502/chapters/8704006) continues with a sudden unexpected Dorian's Dad.

"Did you just say that you've been in contact with Dorian's _father_?" Mahanon demanded.  
  
"Yes," Mother Giselle said, blinking a little in confusion. "He reached out to me. I take it you're familiar with the man?"  
  
"I am more familiar with Halward Pavus than I ever wanted to be," Mahanon said, only leaving out the 'intimately so' that was on his tongue because he needed to swallow down the bile that was clawing up his throat.  
  
"And you also know of the source of the bad blood between-"  
  
Mahanon's laughter interrupted her.  
  
"Sorry, just, _bad blood_ is more appropriate a description than you know," Mahanon told her. "Look, whatever problem you think you have with Dorian because he's from Tevinter, you should be having with his father, five times over. At least."  
  
"It is not merely that he is from Tevinter. His presence at your side make many fear that he is influencing you."  
  
"No one is at my side except through my choice, and Dorian has no more influence over me than any other of my companions. Less, considering I don't normally have him talking my ear off at the War Table." They'd never get anything done if Dorian was a regular member of their War Council.  
  
"I have faith that you know what you do," Mother Giselle said, which was easily the politest way he'd ever been told he was full of shit.  
  
"So... there was a letter?" Mahanon asked.  
  
"Perhaps its best that you read it for yourself," she said, handing it over.  
  
He scanned it. Then he read it properly. Twice.  
  
"Well, that almost _doesn't_ sound like a kidnapping plot," he said at last, impressed against his will by the sheer gall of the man. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and if he tries to correspond with you further, please sent the letters directly to Leliana." He kept hearing rumors that she'd been training her crows to peck out the eyes of deserving contacts once their usefulness had ended. He should really check up on that.  
  
"Then there is no doubt in your mind that this is not a genuine attempt at reconciliation?" Mother Giselle asked.  
  
"No, there isn't."  
  
He hesitated, partially because they were speaking in the middle of a heavily populated construction zone, and mostly because he and Dorian had never actually gotten around to explaining the circumstances of how they met. It was a game: it frustrated their friends immensely to not know how they knew each other, which was actually hilarious, and seemed to cut _hours_ off of the long boring stretches of wandering around the Hinterlands, and apparently being stalked by every bear ever.  
  
In the end, he decided to go with his usual strategy of barreling straight on through. "Listen, you've never met the man. I have. He's a piece of work, and removing himself from his influence was the healthiest thing Dorian could have done for himself, and making sure I left with him was the healthiest he could have done for me."  
  
Mother Giselle was not stupid, or unfeeling, even if she did give Dorian the evil eye a lot more often than was strictly necessary. She figured it out right away, he could tell from the expression on his face.  
  
"Good day, Mother Giselle," he said, and hurried off in the direction of the library.

* * *

“Please tell me one of the apprentices hasn’t set the scaffolding on fire again,” Dorian greeted him as he skidded to a halt in front of his nook.  
  
“Your father has been in touch with Mother Giselle and is trying to lure you out on your own away from the Inquisition!” Mahanon said. Except that he was kind of saying that all at once, and at least one of those words had actually come out in elvhen.  
  
“Did you just mention my father and Mother Giselle in the same sentence?” Dorian asked.  
  
Mahanon nodded.  
  
“Are you quite sure that the scaffolding’s not on fire instead?”  
  
Mahanon shook his head, and handed Dorian the letter. “Here.”  
  
Dorian read the note, his mouth opening and closing silently as he did so. “I know my son,” he said finally. “What my father knows about me couldn’t fill a thimble. And what’s this about a family retainer? Probably some thug my father’s hired to hit me over the head and drag me back to Tevinter.”  
  
“That’s kind of what I was afraid of,” Mahanon concurred. “He hasn’t tried this before, has he? I mean, it’s been two years…”  
  
“No. I mean, every so often I’d get a letter, but I never opened them, and if he’s ever sent anyone after me I’ve managed to remain blissfully ignorant of it,” Dorian said. “This might be the first time I’ve been in one place long enough for him to try it, however.”  
  
Mahanon regarded him for a moment.  
  
“What?” Dorian asked.  
  
“You spent the last two years as a wandering vagrant, didn’t you?” he asked.  
  
“You’re one to talk,” Dorian retorted. “ _I_ normally had a roof over my head.”  
  
“Hey, an aravel roof is still a roof,” Mahanon protested.  
  
“I’ll have you know I was enjoying the holiday from blood magic, kidnapping, and my father,” Dorian continued. “And if the world wasn’t ending, I would be enjoying it still.”  
  
“Same here,” Mahanon agreed. “So, this is probably a trap… do you think it involves the Venatori?”  
  
“That would only make sense if my father was working with the Venatori,” Dorian said. “Which is- well. It would be against his principles, so I suppose anything’s possible.”  
  
“Okay, so Cullen’s still got soldiers in the Hinterlands helping out on Master Dennet’s farm,” Mahanon said. “We can have them surround the tavern, we’ll go in with the Bull and Cole and be prepared for any surprises.”  
  
“If it’s a trap we’ll escape and kill everybody,” Dorian said. “If it’s not, then we’ll send this retainer back to Tevinter with a note telling father he can stick his alarm in his wits end.”  
  
“That’s the very least of what your father can stick in there,” Mahanon muttered. “Alright, pack your things, the sooner we deal with this, the better.”

* * *

Dorian looked a little green around the gills when they entered the Hinterlands, hunched over himself on his horse as though to ward away a chill. That would have been pretty normal, had he been complaining about it, but he was silent, which started out weird and only got worrying the longer it went on.  
  
Mahanon tried to pull him out of it, he really did, but nothing seemed to be working. Even their old argument about the new school of magic he was learning didn’t get out the front door.  
  
“But it just makes sense, I mean, when the Breach opened, spirit healing became a really bad idea, so I might as well get something out of it, right? Even if I can’t use rift magic spells once we’ve sealed everything back up, I’ll be able to heal again, so that’s alright.”  
  
Nothing. No rejoinder about the similarities between the intercession of spirits to heal and of wisps to raise the dead, no pointed remarks about him getting out of practice, just a grunt that might as well be a concession.  
  
When they stopped for the night, Dorian took his meal to the outskirts of the camp, while Mahanon watched him from the fire, dithering.  
  
“You would be helping, I think, if you went to him,” Cole told him, so he got up and joined Dorian overlooking the creek by the Dennet farm.  
  
“Inquisitor,” Dorian said curtly.  
  
Mahanon raised an eyebrow. “Altus.”  
  
Dorian drooped a little at the mention of his title. Mahanon sat down next to him.  
  
“You know that no matter what sort of cover story your father supplied this retainer with, we’re not going to let him take you back to Tevinter, right?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” Dorian said with a sigh.  
  
They sat there for a moment, watching the way the current of the water distorted the reflection of the stars.  
  
“Do you think he knows?” Dorian asked suddenly. “That you’re the Inquisitor, I mean.”  
  
“Probably not,” Mahanon told him. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he might. “It’s not like he ever asked for my name. He was more the ‘hey, you there, elf, obey my every whim’ sort.”  
  
Dorian snorted.  
  
“Besides, if he knew I was the Inquisitor, I’m sure he’d have thrown in some insinuations about my amazing blowjob skills along with-”

Dorian threw up.  
  
“Dread Wolf take me!” Mahanon cursed, kneeling down next to him and pulling his cloak further away from the mess. “Shit. Are you okay? I’m sorry, I-”  
  
“Don’t apologize,” Dorian rasped. “Not to me. Not over _that_.”

Mahanon blinked. “I’m going to go get some water for you. I’ll be right back.”  
  
Dorian nodded. Mahanon returned to camp, where the Bull was sitting, looking worried.  
  
“You don’t have to tell me any details, but just how bad was Dorian shit up by whatever happened with his father?” the Bull asked.  
  
“Pretty bad,” Mahanon said. “Made worse by the fact that Dorian thought the guy was a bastion of virtue for most of his life.”  
  
The Bull grunted. Cole materialized with a waterskin and a very large blanket, which Mahanon took back to Dorian.  
  
“Here,” he said, passing the water over to Dorian.  
  
Dorian took it, poured some water into his mouth without actually putting his lips on the skin and rinsed out his mouth.  
  
“It was for me, you know,” he said miserably after he spat. “Everything he did to you, it was supposed to be an object lesson in socially acceptable ways to satiate my deviant desires.”  
  
“It’s not your fault that your father is a giant dick,” Mahanon said. “It’s also not your fault that Tevinter is a land of dicks who think one man raping another man is more acceptable than two men having a relationship.”  
  
“But he didn’t used to do that,” Dorian insisted. “You never met him before we started to fight- I drove him to-”  
  
“Hey, stop that,” Mahanon snapped, and Dorian shut up.  
  
“Look. You’re right, I never met back when he was sticking to those principles you’re so upset over. But honestly I don’t think he ever really valued them all that much, if an impending lack of grandchildren was enough to make him abandon him.”  
  
“I looked up to him. I wanted to be just like him,” Dorian confessed. “What does that make me now?”

“A better man,” Mahanon told him. “When things got desperate for you, you didn’t hurt anyone, you didn’t turn to blood magic, you took me and got us both out of the country. You walked across a warzone to help your friend, and now you’re fighting on the front lines of a war to stop the world from ending. Meanwhile, your father couldn’t even be arsed to come down here himself.”  
  
“Thank the Maker for small mercies,” Dorian said.  
  
“And all things considered, I’m glad that your father bought me,” Mahanon continued.  
  
“What,” Dorian said, looking at him like he’d grown a second head.  
  
“It wasn’t like he ordered me to be captured, specifically,” Mahanon said. “It’s not like he sat back at his estate and said ‘bring me the fairest elf in all the lands’, cackling madly all the while. I mean, you’d have probably have realized he was a dick much sooner if he did that.”  
  
“Probably,” Dorian said, looking at him less like he’d grown a second head- maybe like Mahanon had a growth on his shoulder he’d just never noticed before.  
  
“Don’t get me wrong! I could have happily lived to see the next age with ever hearing of your father’s existence, but I was already enslaved. Anyone else who bought me could have easily been just like him or worse, but I doubt they’d have had a son like you.”  
  
Dorian didn’t seem to know what to do with that.  
  
“In conclusion: you aren’t allowed to have more angst about this than I have, that’s just silly,” he finished.  
  
“Believe me, I am aware,” Dorian said.  
  
They sat in silence for a while.  
  
“Do you want to try eating again?” Mahanon asked.  
  
“No, thank you.”  
  
“Feel like turning in?”  
  
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” Dorian said.  
  
“Plans for tomorrow?”  
  
“Besides those we’ve already made?”  
  
“Well, we haven’t quite figured out how to tell your father to fuck off yet,” Mahanon pointed out. “Like, if it’s a trap, we’ll just send the bodies back to Qarinus with a note reading ‘HA HA FUCK YOU’ but if this is an actual attempt at talking through an intermediary, how do you want to phrase that?”  
  
“I must admit, I’m rather proud of thinking of the ‘put your alarm in your wits end’ line,” Dorian mused.  
  
“I’m sure we can find some way of working that in,” Mahanon replied.  
  
“You’re plotting something aren’t you?”  
  
“Really, Dorian, I’m the Inquisitor. I don’t plot, I wave my glowing hand at the problem and hope it doesn’t decide to suddenly stop working.”  
  
“That would explain the number of times Josephine has had to replace furniture after one of your etiquette lessons.”  
  
“Funny you should mention those lessons- I think maybe I should use those to let your father know who I am in most passive-aggressively snide way known to mortals.”  
  
“Why would you want him to know where you are?” Dorian asked.  
  
“Because he thought he owned me, and now I’m the last, best hope for the world not ending,” Mahanon told him. “That’s got to be embarrassing, right?”  
  
“I’m sure we can come up with something.”  
  
Neither one of them went to sleep that night. At one point Mahanon threw the blanket over both of them and they sat there and plotted about all the nasty, clever things they were going to tell the retainer to pass on to Magister Pavus.

* * *

It wasn’t until he was watching Halward Pavus walk way too calmly down the stairs that Mahanon remembered that, oh right, he was terrified of the man, and for reasons completely unrelated to what he’d been planning to do to Dorian. Unfortunately, by that time his feet were already stuck to the floor and he really couldn’t have made any kind of noise at all, let alone any of the witty remarks they’d come up with last night. He couldn’t even recall what they were.  
  
“Father,” Dorian said coolly. “So the family retainer was just what, a smokescreen? Another one of your convenient lies?”  
  
“Then you were told,” Halward replied, his eyes flicking between Dorian and Mahanon. “I would apologize for the deception-”  
  
Dorian snorted.  
  
“But I did not believe you would come if I told the truth,” Halward finished.  
  
“You’re too right I wouldn’t have come!” Dorian spluttered. “After what you tried to do- after what you actually did.”  
  
He half-pointed to Mahanon as he said it, like he realized mid-gesture that maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to him. Mahanon appreciated the thought, but he’d appreciate being pretty much anywhere else more.  
  
“I should have known it would be like that,” Halward said, watching Mahanon with flat, cold eyes. His stare lasted about as long as it took Cole to materialize in front of him, daggers bristling. Behind him, he heard the Bull heft his axe: Halward tried very badly to hide his surprise, and suddenly his fear seemed very far away.  
  
He was the Inquisitor. He had troops surrounding the tavern, he had a very eclectic and even more powerful strike team at his back, and not only was his magic not bound, but he’d learned to punch things with the Fade just recently.

And Magister Halward Pavus didn’t have the first clue who he was dealing with.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Dorian was snarling when Mahanon interrupted him.  
  
“Five gold.”  
  
Dorian blinked, and turned to face him with endearing bewilderment. “What?”  
  
Mahanon held out his hand. It didn’t shake. He was calmer than he’d ever been in his entire fucking life. “Five gold,” he repeated. “I did bet you that he wouldn’t know who I am.”  
  
“I remember exactly-” Halward began, but was cut off when Dorian realized what Mahanon was doing.  
  
“This is highway robbery, Inquisitor,” Dorian drawled, reaching into his pocket and dropping a random amount of coin into his hand. 

Mahanon made a fist around the coins and pushed a little energy into his Mark- just enough to make the green glow evident.  
  
“See?” Mahanon said, turning back to Halward. “Slap on a pair of pointy ears and some facial tattoos and we all look alike to you, don’t we?”  
  
For the first time in his memory, Halward looked worried.  
  
“Let me explain the situation to you,” Mahanon said. “Mother Giselle came to me with your letter, and we immediately thought that you were going to try to have Dorian kidnapped. As a result, this tavern is surrounded with Inquisition troops, and I brought the Ben-Hassrath agent and mind-reading spirit boy with us to this meeting.”  
  
“Call me the Iron Bull,” the Bull said with forced joviality.  
  
“You weren’t a person to him before,” Cole reported. “But now you are, and he’s frightened.”  
  
“Good, he should be,” Mahanon replied. “The last Magister I faced off against was a thousand-plus-year-old darkspawn with the ability to pull an archdemon from his ass. After that, he’s really not all that impressive.”  
  
“Was there something you wanted to say?” Dorian demanded. “Or did you just come down here to keep up appearances?”

“I-” Halward said, looking frustrated. This was clearly not how he’d expected this conversation to go. “I didn’t mean to drive you to the Inquisition, Dorian if I’d-”  
  
“Yes, it’s abundantly obvious now that you didn’t actually meant all those sayings- about doing the right thing because its right, rather than to appear to be in the right- to be principles. You meant them as platitudes. You said them because they flattered the image you wanted people to have of yourself,” Dorian spat. “Well, the joke’s on you: I actually believe them.”  
  
“I made a mistake,” Halward said desperately. “I wanted only the best for you, and what I did was only done in the interests of ensuring you could have the best possible future.”  
  
“And what you did to Mahanon?” Dorian demanded. “What possible justifications could you have for that?”  
  
“Didn’t you hear Cole? I wasn’t a person then,” Mahanon replied. “I suppose it would be too much to ask that you be ashamed of yourself, now that you’ve realized I am? Maybe even come to the realization that you own other people?”  
  
“House Pavus has always treated their slaves-”  
  
Dorian laughed, very bitter but only mildly hysterical.  
  
“Do you-” Dorian began, pausing to let out one last high-strung giggle. “Do you particularly want to listen to this? Because I don’t want to listen to this. I’d like to leave.”  
  
“I think your father should leave,” Mahanon suggested. “I mean, he’d rented out the bar, we dragged a platoon of Inquisitions soldiers away from their work to deal with, the least he could do is buy the drinks.”  
  
Halward stared at him dumbly.  
  
“Well?” Mahanon asked. “I could make that an order, if you like. I could even back it up with force.”  
  
Halward bowed stiffly, blood flushing in his cheeks. He walked past them, pausing to say “You and my son appear to work well together, Inquisitor. Perhaps if I’d purchased you for him, this unpleasantness could have all been avoided.”  
  
Mahanon reached out to the Fade to summon a Veilstrike, but before he could manifest it, Dorian punched his father, with the physical fist attached to the end of his arm.  
  
Halward staggered, mostly from shock though there was a thin trickled of blood coming from his lip.  
  
“Walk out of here while you still have legs,” Mahanon ordered.  
  
Halward sped out of the tavern without another word. Dorian grimaced, shaking out his hand.  
  
“Let me see that,” Mahanon told him.  
  
“You do realize that-” Dorian began, cutting himself off when Mahanon took his hand.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, Spirit Healing and Fade Rifts make poor bedfellows,” he replied. “I can still check you over for fractures.”  
  
“I should have lit him on fire,” Dorian hissed.  
  
Mahanon made a noncommittal noise.  
  
“Pardon me,” Dorian said, abruptly jerking his hand free of Mahanon’s. He grabbed his staff and rushed out the door.  
  
There was a crackle of flame, a yelp, and the smell of burning. Dorian shouted something in Tevene- Mahanon didn’t really understand what, his understanding of Tevene was pretty much limited to commands like ‘get up on your hands and knees on the bed’ and various appropriate responses thereto, and wow, that was really useless information to have, maybe Cole could forget that for him, and oh hey look, Dorian was back.  
  
“I seem to recall there being some mention of drinks?” he said, already heading for the bar.  
  
“Yeah,” the Bull said. “Why don’t you take your pick and I’ll grab some kegs to bring outside for the soldiers.”  
  
Dorian nodded, but made no move from the stool he’d thrown himself into. Cole went behind the bar instead, and came up with some kind of dusty crystalline bottle of something that was presumably helpful. The Bull picked up four giant barrels of beer, and Mahanon stayed where he was, halfway between Dorian and the door.  
  
“Hey kid, I need your help with this,” the Bull called out.  
  
“You can help each other,” Cole whispered, squeezing Mahanon’s shoulder. Then he followed the Bull out, and they were left alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original fill can be found [here](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/14317.html?thread=54369517#t54369517). 
> 
> Also, in case you were wondering about the titles- at some point I had some kind of mail-order bride joke that just never fit anywhere. I've since lost it, and now the punchlines are just kind of hanging out there, titling things.


	10. Of Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which F!Lavellan knows she's a hypocrite, but can't help the feeling that 80% of her Inner Circle are babies.

She received her vallaslin at the age of sixteen, a good two years younger than average, because she’d killed a great bear on her own.

Specifically, because she’d decided that killing a great bear on her own would be a great way to convince the Keeper she was an adult, so she left the clan in the middle of the night, spent three days tracking the bear down, a further two laying traps and such down a trail, and the next day baiting the thing to come chase her down her trail of traps so she could kill it. She vastly overestimated her ability to carry great bear parts, and most of the meat went to waste. But she carried the pelt and claws back to the clan, and was deemed worthy of her vallaslin almost before her parents could absorb the fact that she wasn’t dead after all.

In hindsight, she was pretty sure she’d been given her vallaslin because the Keeper had been terrified what sort of stunt she’d pull next if she were denied again.

These were the facts she tried to keep in mind when she dealt with her people- both within her clan and within the Inquisition. The hunters were not actually getting younger, the baby-faced city elves that came to join the clan were capable of making their own decisions and their own mistakes, and the Inquisition was absolutely not going to send children to fight their battles.

Still. Sometimes she looked around at her very adult, very competent, very independent companions and thought ‘You are _babies_. What were your parents thinking?’

(Of course, she knew what _some_ of their parents had been thinking when their children started joining the Inquisition, and by and large she was not impressed.)

This was a problem, and one which only got worse the longer she spent around humans (and therefore the better she got at being able to guess their ages under all that hair). It was the Bull who really tested her, however.

“Please, tell me you’re older than I am.”

Solas paused in the act of touching up his fresco depicting the fall of Haven to stare at her.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got at least a couple years on me, but at the moment I’m really beginning to question my ability to tell these things,” she clarified.

Solas set aside his painting implements and walked over to his desk. He picked up a cup and sniffed it experimentally.

“I’m making sure this is the tea some poor misguided soul keeps leaving on my desk, not paint water,” he explained. It was apparently tea, because he waved his hand over it, and then handed her the now-steaming cup. “In answer to your question, I am older than you, as are Blackwall, Vivienne, and Leliana.”

“Praise Sylaise,” she murmured, taking an experimental sip. It was the honeyed black tea blend she liked best, which just made her suspect that the poor misguided soul in question was actually Cole. “The Bull is younger than I am. He’s not even forty yet.”

Solas made a thoughtful humming noise. “He and the Seeker are of an age, I believe.”

“I thought he was over fifty,” she said morosely. “I might have made a joke about cradle robbing in relation to Dorian.”

“I take it he was swift to correct you?”

“Well, when Dorian was born I would have been about ten,” she replied, in her best (though, admittedly not very good) impression of the Bull. “Which still could have ended badly, because I don’t know the first thing about infant care, but it’s not like I was finished growing at that point.”

There was a loud thump from overhead and Dorian’s face appeared over the balcony.

“Don’t you have rifts to close? Or assassinations to prevent? Or dragons to kill? Or _anything else_ to discuss?” he demanded.

“That reminds me,” she replied. “We’ve gotten word that two of the three dragons in the Emprise du Lion are ice-spitters. As soon as Judicael’s Crossing has been restored we’re heading out, so make sure you’ve gotten all the cold-weather clothes you need from Ser Morris.”

Dorian retreated, muttering what she would guess were dire invectives in Tevene.

“He’s very close in age to your own children, isn’t he?” Solas muttered in an undertone, so his voice wouldn’t carry.

The Inquisitor nodded, holding up four fingers, and took another drink from her tea.

“You know, to the ancient elves you might look a child, even with all that you’ve accomplished,” Solas told her.

“I know,” she replied. “I got the ‘once our ancestors took centuries to come of age’ talk a lot when I was growing up.” She waited a bit before asking “So, was that true?”

“To a point,” Solas conceded. “In times of hardship, whether for the People as a whole, or for the individual in question, people aged faster.”

“Is that why we’re no longer immortal?” she asked. “Too much hardship to bear?”

“Not quite,” Solas said. “Or so I believe. It’s difficult to say for certain- as you might imagine, the point at which the People began to age and die was a confusing one for many, and their memories are muddled by it.”

“The lack of magic must have been confusing as well,” she mused.

“It frightened them more than death,” Solas confirmed.

She thought that one over for a moment trying to imagine it- a world where not having magic would be a fate worse than death, rather than one less reason for the shemlen to want you dead. “Well. It’s not that bad.”

“You’re used to it. They were not.”

She shrugged. It was a fair enough point.

Eventually Solas returned to his painting, and she sat and watched, sipping her tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same Inquisitor as [Dirth'ena Enasalin ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3460502/chapters/8744821) and [The Lovers, The Dreamers, And We](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3999826%22).


	11. Let's Do The Time Warp Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian and Mommy!Lavellan get thrown back in time to when the Hero of Fereldan was dealing with Connor's possession incident. 
> 
> This was originally supposed to be a full-length fic, but I cannot make any more of it come, so I'm just going to post the snippet I have here.

At first, Dorian thought that it hadn’t worked, or at least hadn’t worked well enough. There were undead rising out of every room, and though the mage they’d freed from the cells didn’t appear to be corrupted with lyrium like Grand Enchanter Fiona or the Herald’s companions had been, it may just be early days yet- there weren’t anything coming out of the walls either. There was no way to tell: Jowan seemed reluctant to talk about anything other than wanted to help fix the mess he made, which made him think that he was one of the rebel mages Alexius conscripted.

That changed, when they heard the sounds of battle. The Inquisition’s soldiers? The battle between the Venatori and the Fereldan Army that journal they’d found discussed?

Neither of the above, as it turned out: as they drew nearer, they saw that it was a small, rag-tag group of fighters, three humans and an elf: the elven woman switching between daggers and bow lightning-fast, a tall blond man with a sword and shield, a sparingly clothed woman who turned into a bloody bear before his eyes, and-

Was that the Inquisition’s spymaster? What was her name- Leliana? It certainly looked like the woman, but-

But he should probably stare at some time when there weren’t hordes of undead trying to eat his face off.

Between his company and theirs, it didn’t take terribly long to clear the room, which lead to something of a tense standoff. Leliana didn’t seem to recognize either one of them, and more than that, she looked so young-

“ _Fenedhis lasa_ ,” Lavellan said, sheathing her daggers and putting her hands out as a peace offering. “You’re the- Wardens.”

Oh. Oh, _venhedis_.

“Please tell me you’re not bounty hunters,” said the man, quite possibly the future King of Fereldan.

“Please tell me the bounty on us isn’t so high that people are going to try to carve their way through an undead infested fortress to get to us,” said the elf, quite probably the future Hero of Fereldan.

“Well, we’re not bounty hunters, so I’m afraid I have no idea what the price on your heads is,” Dorian said.

“Who are you, then?” the probably-Hero asked.

“I’m Lavellan,” the Herald introduced herself, before pointing to him. “This is Dorian, and-”

“Oh look, they brought the blood mage,” said probably-Tabris.

“The _what_?” Dorian snapped rounding on Jowan with a vehemence that, from what he could see in his peripheral vision, caused everyone else in the room to take a large step back away from him.

“Whoa,” said the elf likely named Tabris. “Okay, let’s not kill anything that isn’t already dead, yeah?”

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Dorian said. “I was just going to demand an explanation.”

“Really? He told us what he’d done readily enough,” said possibly-Alistair.

“And then we did kind of leave him in the cell,” probably-Tabris pointed out.

“Good point,” possibly-Alistair replied.

“I just want to try and make things right,” Jowan repeated. “Let me try, please.”

Dorian turned away. This was not a particular avenue of thought he needed to go down right now. Or preferably ever. “Well? And you are, exactly?” he demanded.

“Warden Tabris and Warden Alistair,” said the very definitely future Hero of Fereldan.

 _Andraste’s tits_ , Dorian thought, trying to manipulate the surroundings with will alone: nothing moved, which meant that they were likely not in the Fade, and this was real.

“Morrigan, a Witch of the Wilds, and Leliana,” here, Tabris smiled wryly. “Formerly a lay sister at the Lothering Chantry.”

“Well,” Lavellan said. “That certainly sounds like there’s a tale or two there.”

“Indeed,” Leliana said, and Maker, she _was_ young. It was in her voice, clear as day.

“But perhaps we should save the tales for later?” Tabris suggested.

“We should find my uncle. Sort of,” Alistair suggested, adding after a beat. “We should definitely find him, he’s only sort of my uncle.”

“And I doubt we’re the only one with a tale of tell,” Morrigan drawled. “There are no Dalish clans around here, and I know of few Dalish who would travel with an apostate.”

“We’ll get to that later,” Tabris said, already moving towards the door.

“Well, I’m not an apostate, really,” Dorian pointed out, because in 9:30 Dragon, that meant something.

“Later,” Tabris repeated firmly, and then they were back to wading through wave after wave of undead.

\-----

He stayed to the sidelines during the confrontation between Isolde, the newly unthralled Teagan, and the Wardens’ company. Lavellan followed suit but they were looking at different places. She stared down the hall where Connor- a little boy, not the despairing young man he knew from Redcliffe as it would be, or the desperate shell of a man that had committed suicide before their eyes mere hours before and twelve-ish years from now. He was looking at the Hero of Fereldan.

They had talked of her in Tevinter, of course: she had killed an archdemon and lived to tell the tale, so it had been a matter of lively academic debate as to what sort of ritual could have produced such results. Somewhere in Vyrantium, he was a young man just beginning his senior apprenticeship: he’d had a minor obsession with those theories for time, just after the Blight had ended. But when people in Tevinter talked of Tabris herself, rather than of her deeds, they made her out to be some sort of thug, more Alistair’s bodyguard than anything else.

Tabris was a short- all around tiny, really- woman, and barely that. She was younger than he was by at least five years, probably closer to ten. She had the dark skin he normally associated with Rivain or some of the more easterly regions of Antiva, and flaming red hair that shone like a beacon in the firelight, which struck him as odd, because most of the engravings he’d seen of her made her look like a native of Seheron, olive-skinned and white haired. She was indisputably in charge of the Wardens’ company, and although she kicked things in the crotch with alarming frequency, she was cunning rather than brutish. There were tattoos on her face, though they were done in a very different style than the ones Lavellan wore. He wondered what that meant.

And then Jowan brought up blood magic, and that suddenly seemed far less important.

“No, absolutely not,” he interjected.

“But if it will save Connor-” Isolde began.

“He will not thank you for it,” Dorian cut her off. “Believe me, Lady Isolde. Blood magic can have wildly unpredictable effects, and there is always more a price to be paid then there first appears.”

“How do you know?” Jowan demanded.

He was afraid, and Dorian wondered what he’d promised the demon who’d taught him how to tap into that power. Then he wondered how he should answer.

“Right. Proper introductions, this time,” he said, after the barest moment of hesitation. Lavellan glared at him, but he ignored her for the time being. Tabris had said that she didn’t want to kill anyone today- hopefully that included people such as himself. “I’m Dorian, of House Pavus.” He bowed to Isolde and Teagan, and then the Wardens’ company. He ignored Jowan. “Of Asariel and Qarinus, most recently of Minrathous, and an Enchanter of the Circle of Vyrantium, all of which is in Tevinter.”

The response to his proclamation was probably best described as ‘gaping’- all except for Lavellan, who reached for her daggers, just in case there was trouble.

“My country’s reputation for blood magic is, sadly, not at all unfounded,” he continued. “I’ve seen rituals performed thousands of times, and with the exception of a few very basic spells, the effects are rarely entirely what the caster intended them to be, and often require much more from the caster than they wanted to pay.”

“You’re a magister?” Tabris demanded.

“I’m Altus,” Dorian corrected. “Same class as most of the magisters, but I’m not actually part of the Magisterium. My government annoys me at best, to be entirely frank.”

“Which is why he’s down here, slumming it in Fereldan,” Lavellan improvised. “The ‘annoyed at best’ feelings are mutual.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t come to enjoy the scent of wet dog,” Dorian said.

“As interesting as this is getting, maybe we could get back on topic and someone could give me some options besides blood magic or killing a small child?” Tabris said.

“There are other ways to enter the Fade,” Dorian said.

“He’s right,” Morrigan said. “The Circle Tower has mages and lyrium aplenty- ‘twill be sufficient for our needs, certainly.”

“Then I guess we’re hitting the Circle next,” Tabris sighed.

“But it can take a week to reach the Lake Calenhad docks,” Isolde protested. “Longer, on foot.”

“So give us some horses and we’ll take the week,” Tabris argued. “It’s better than losing your son- or your son losing his mother.”

“If Connor is- if the demon reasserts itself while you’re gone, what then?” Teagan asked.

“I can help,” Jowan said again. “I might be able to bind the demon temporarily-”

“No,” Dorian interrupted. “I can help, and without resorting to blood magic.”

“How?” Jowan demanded.

“Blood magic is the last resort of the weak mind,” Dorian recited, proud of how little bitterness seeped into his tone. “I heard that so often growing up that for a time I thought it was the family motto. Very few other Altus families hold the same convictions, however, which forced mine to get very creative with our defensive techniques. I’m not sure what I can do about the demon possessing Connor, per say, but I can stop another undead army from rising, and I can protect a small number of people from being placed under a thrall.”

“Morrigan?” Tabris asked. The witch shrugged.

“I have met mages from the Tevinter Imperium before,” Alistair said. “They would sometimes come to visit, as a sort of lecturing professor bit. I never really understood what they were talking about, but people generally agreed that they knew their stuff.”

“I can vouch for Dorian’s character,” Lavellan said. “But we left the limits of my knowledge of magical theory a while back- a _very_ long while back.”

“So far back it’s practically a decade in the future,” Dorian couldn’t help but add.

“Thank you, Dorian,” Lavellan said. “I think they’ve got the message.”

“Okay, so, I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but let’s go with the ‘vint on this one,” Tabris said. “He, Jowan, and Lavellan will stay here to keep things from getting worse, and the rest of us will ride for the Circle as soon as possible.”

“I’ll head back down to the village to find you some horses, Warden,” Teagan said.

“Thank you, Bann Teagan,” Tabris replied with a slightly ridiculous curtsey. “We’ll stay here, and make sure things are settled.”

She was looking directly at Dorian as she said it, but before either she could ask a question, or Dorian could try to forestall that, Alistair turned to Lavellan and said “So, we have these treaties…”

“I’m sorry- I’m not a Keeper, I don’t have the authority to remand hunters from my own clan to the cause, let alone from other clans,” Lavellan said apologetically.

“Ah,” Alistair said. “So… where is your clan?”

“Northwest of Ostwick, actually,” she said, still apologetic. “As, officially, am I, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention me to anyone.”

“You’re a spy,” Leliana said, causing Dorian to jump slightly. He’d almost forgotten she was there.

“A Dalish spy?” Lavellan said incredulously, pressing a hand to her chest in shock- all of it so exaggeratedly fake that Dorian couldn’t help but snicker. “ _Dirthamen ar’an am_ , what a strange idea!”

Tabris smiled, equal parts teeth and impish glee. “Sure,” she drawled. “And my father spent the Occupation as a perfectly ordinary valet, performing perfectly ordinary valet duties.”

“Well, I can’t say that I’ve ever met your father, so I wouldn’t know,” Lavellan replied.

Tabris smirked. “Have you ever heard of the Night Elves?”

“Of course,” Lavellan replied.

“Really?” Tabris beamed. “That’s a first!”

“Well, you know how human memories are,” Lavellan said. “No offense to present company.”

“None taken,” Dorian said, before someone else could. “I’m well aware that our history tends to write your people out of their accomplishments.”

That seemed to surprise everyone, but it was Tabris who responded first. “So… how much ‘annoyed’ is your government at you?”

“I’ve neither been officially exiled nor formally disowned, and my Circle membership has yet to be revoked,” Dorian replied. “There have been fewer attempts on my life than I thought there would be, but that might be because the Imperium is under the impression that I won’t be returning.”

“And how far to the northwest of Ostwick is your clan now?” she asked.

“Not as far northwest as the Tevinter Imperium, certainly,” Lavellan said with glaring insincerity. “The Dalish are only caught dead there, as I’m sure you know.”

Tabris grinned, clearly thinking that she’d stumbled upon key players in a Tevinter-Dalish counter-Magisterium plot of some kind. It was- very well done actually. He wondered if there wasn’t some truth to her insinuations of spyhood after all.

What had a Dalish elf been doing at the Conclave anyway?

“I should get to work, if that’s alright with present company,” Dorian said.

“Please,” Isolde said, and he left Lavellan to talk her way through this.

\-----

Lavellan came to find him at sunset, when he was just starting the ever-present debate of ‘should I continue to squint in the half-light as I work or give up and light a lamp?’

“How’s your magic going?”

“For the current demon problem? Finished,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding about my family’s lack of use of blood magic and the dangers that possesses. I can probably recite the Litany of Adralla in my sleep.” He wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he was- he’d kept repeating it, over and over again like a prayer on the voyage over from Tevinter, just in case. He’d practically vomited it when he was seasick, so sleep chanting was not at all without the realm of possibility.

“I’ll assume that’s some kind of blood magic countermeasure,” Lavellan said.

“It is. Supposedly one of my ancestors developed it, and then fled to Fereldan of all places when the other magisters tried to kill her for it.”

“You don’t know?”

“If it’s true, she was stricken from the House records, and likely threw the family into disgrace when she left,” Dorian told her. “Officially, House Pavus’ fortunes were founded by Gideon Pavus during the Exalted Age, and the family history largely skips from _somniari_ to there.”

Lavellan nodded, the information visibly filed away for later. “The Wardens are moving out in the morning, and we’re staying here with Isolde, Connor and the demon. In the year 9:30 Dragon. I thought that wasn’t possible? Didn’t Alexius say that he couldn’t go back to before the Conclave? This is before there was a need for the Conclave. I don’t think the Temple of Sacred Ashes has even been rediscovered yet.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” he said, leaning back so it was more obvious that he was working on the amulet. “I thought at first that it had something to do with your mark, but if that was the case, then why did we go into the future the first time?”

“Could it have something to do with the Blight?” Lavellan asked. “I mean- Felix…”

“Saving him was Alexius’ goal, not ours,” Dorian said with a twinge of guilt. “I- we can’t change anything. It could have disastrous consequences.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, what if we somehow stopped the Wardens from being able to kill Urthemiel?”

“Urth who?”

“Urthemiel,” Dorian repeated. “The archdemon responsible for this Blight- somehow or another it was agreed that he was Urthemiel, the Old God of Beauty.”

“…okay. That’s something else we should discuss another time. Because Dorian- you do realize that you’ve probably already changed things, right?”

“What?” Dorian asked. “How?”

“Well, for one thing the future Inquisition spymaster now knows your full name more than a decade before she was supposed to,” Lavellan pointed out. “For another, seeing as we weren’t here, my guess is that Jowan used blood magic to keep the demon possessing Connor at bay while the Wardens sorted out the Circle of Magi, and who knows what effect that might have on the Veil, which could affect rift placement later.”

“ _Vishante kaffas_ ,” he groaned. “I didn’t even think.”

“Yeah, I can’t help but get the impression that blood magic is sort of a sore spot for you,” Lavellan said.

He was saved from replying to that by the sound of breaking glass out in the hallway.

“Can I help you, Warden Tabris?” Lavellan called out. Dorian leaned back to see the elf standing by the door at the end of the hall, looking down at the small pile of glass in bemusement.

“Man, that looked expensive. I hope the lady of the house doesn’t want your hide for it,” she said, kicking some of the larger pieced underneath a nearby armoire.

“I’m sure I can find a corpse for her to take her displeasure out on,” Lavellan replied. “Did you need anything, or were you just curious?”

“Just curious,” Tabris replied. “As you were anticipating, I see.”

Oh. Lavellan must have balanced that glass piece so that if the door opened, it would fall and alert them. Clever, if a bit crude.

“I can’t promise you very many straight answers, I’m afraid,” Lavellan said.

“Then how about an offer?” Tabris said. “I realize that you’ve got your own mission, but I highly doubt that the Blight is going to make it any easier to complete. You’re both obviously competent fighters- join with my group, at least until this is over.”

“You do understand that I wouldn’t stop being Tevinter,” Dorian told her. Lavellan glared at him.

“As long as you and Sten didn’t pick a fight over it, I think I’ll survive,” Tabris replied.

“You’ve got a Qunari with you?” Dorian asked. _That_ had not made it into the version of events circulated around Tevinter.

“Yeah. No horns, though, which was kind of surprising,” Tabris said with a shrug.

“We’ll have to think about it,” Lavellan said before he could demand further information. “If nothing else, I don’t think we can join you until after this whole demon possessing a small child business is completed. Someone will have to watch the wards, and I think Dorian might have an apoplexy if that’s left to Jowan.”

“She does have a point,” Dorian said.

“Well. Come and have dinner with us, at least. The food’s hot, and if nothing else you’ll get a feel for the company.”

“I should start handing these out,” Dorian replied, gathering the protective amulets he’d made. He passed two to Lavellan. “Do me a favor and give Jowan his for me?”

\-----

Dinner was tense for him, mostly because Dorian was try very, very hard not to accidentally disrupt history any more than he might have already. The food was hot if sparingly seasoned, and Lavellan kept most of the attention on herself, telling a truly outrageous story involving a rabbit and ruins and a village’s worth of naked young men, amongst other improbable things.

However, Sten the Qunari kept eyeballing him.

“You are from Tevinter,” he said finally.

“Well spotted,” Dorian replied. “It’s almost as though I announced my nationality to a room full of your travelling companions.”

“And you are a mage.”

“Yes, I’m also a member of the Altus class, and not particularly popular in my homeland, if you’re looking for more confirmation of information you already have.”

“And you do not use blood magic.”

“Very well done, full marks for listening comprehension.”

“Why not use blood magic?”

“Because it’s a dangerous art which causes far more problems than it solves. You’re Qunari. Shouldn’t you be lecturing me on the dangers of magic in general, rather than focusing on one particular school?”

“You recognize the dangers of one school while not recognizing the dangers of the whole practice.”

“I differentiate between the dangers of making a deal with a demon and throwing a fireball at my enemies. One of these things harms me, or someone I care about, you see. I imagine you use a similar technique to tell the difference between striking a darkspawn and hitting yourself in the head with your sword.”

“My sword does not make me vulnerable to demon possession.”

“Your sword also does not move itself on its own. You have to use will and muscles and years of training, and I’m sure that if you tried very hard you could do something demonic with that.”

“I have no wish to do demonic things.”

“Neither do I! I’m so glad we agree.”

Sten’s mouth twitched, and for one terrifying moment he was sure that the man was going to smile at him.

He shoved the rest of his food into his mouth and excused himself from the dinner table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Points I wanted to hit with the story, but could not make the words come:  
> *Dorian has a Fade/dream encounter with the desire demon possessing Connor. It appears male to him, and taunts him with the idea that it might survive, and one day become the demon his father dealt with for the blood magic ritual.  
> *Lavellan and Isolde do a bit of bonding over the fact that both of their fathers were born in Halamshiral.   
> *Lavellan and Dorian try to console Connor over what's happening without angering the demon  
> *They also have a moment of 'lolwut how old are you????' as they'd each assumed the other was in their thirties, while actually Lavellan is forty-two and Dorian is twenty-eight.  
> *Right before they leave Lavellan tells Connor that he'll have a place waiting for him in the Inquisition if he can just hold out that long.   
> *They make it back to 9:41, and Connor (who clearly recognizes them) ends up cutting short his reunion with Alistair to return to Haven with them. It's impossible to tell whether Leliana remembers them, because she's Leliana. They assume that she does, because she's Leliana.  
> *The time travel fakakte is because of the Blight, but not for Felix reasons, but rather red lyrium reasons.


	12. The Hidden One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fenris gets hit with the memory stick and reverts to Leto, thus revealing to Kirkwall that a) he's a mage and b) he's a little shit.

"Wait," Anders interrupted Fen- _Leto's_ story of helping his Master's daughter learn magic. "You're not only a mage, you're a _blood_ mage?"  
  
"Uh- I use blood magic to enhance my spellcasting. Used. It wasn't my specialization, though," F- Leto explained.  
  
"You're a _malificar_?" Anders demanded.  
  
Leto muttered something under his breath about paranoid Southerners that made Merrill giggle, before saying in tones audible to the rest of the group "I wasn't using anyone's blood but my own. There's only so much you can do with your own mana, as you well know."  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"You bound a spirit to your own lifeforce, did you not?"  
  
It wasn't even a jab. Leto sounded impressed. No wonder Fenris was so sure that mages were half a step away from demonic possession at all times- he'd been that sort of mage.  
  
"No, I didn't," Anders protested. "I didn't merge with Justice to gain power, I merged with him because he was my friend and it seemed like the only way to stop him from dying."  
  
Leto looked highly skeptical. "I'm fairly certain Fade spirits don't work like that."  
  
"And I'm fairly certain that there are ways to enhance the potency of your spellwork without resorting to blood magic," Anders retorted.  
  
"Not for a slave," Leto said, shrugging one shoulder up and down. "What do you think I am, made of lyrium?"  
  
The entire table burst into laughter at that. Anders buried his face in the palm of his hands.  
  
_I'm not drunk enough for this,_ he thought, and for once Justice agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did the teeniest, tiniest minifill for my own [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13010.html?thread=55887826#t55887826) which was:
> 
> "The memory stick strikes our favorite broody death elf, returning all his memories of being Leto, and taking all of his memories of being Fenris.
> 
> The first question he asks is "What happened to my magic?"
> 
> Some bonus points:  
> +Anders is a bit of an ass about it until Hawke/Varric/Isabela tell him to knock it off. Leto is super baffled by it all.  
> ++Leto is a blood mage. A Merrill-esque, responsible, 'using only my own blood or the blood of my enemies' blood mage, but a blood mage never the less. (Merrill is *not* an ass about it, because she's Merrill.)  
> +++Leto/Hawke/Merrill"
> 
> So, before you ask, yes, this was entirely written for the 'made of lyrium' line.


	13. A Quick Tumble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I did an OTP meme from tumblr for Modern-Day AU!Adoribull because I have a case of the sads.

**Which one sexts like a straight white boy?**

Neither of them, really. The Bull will occasionally do so for comedic effect (and also because Dorian rage-replies more quickly than he reply-replies). Dorian is really, _really_ bad at sexting, but it comes from a different place than straight white boy bad sexting. It wasn’t something he did in Tevinter, where he had a very clunky pay-as-you-go phone his father didn’t know about for arranging his liaisons, and it was a pain to text at all on those, let alone do so one-handed. The first time the Bull sent him a sext he was being a bad person and driving. He nearly drove off the road, and the Bull got a three minute long voicemail rant about health hazards in reply.

**Which one cried during a fucking disney movie?**

Both of them. Dorian has a list of reasons why he just happens to have gone misty-eyed while a Disney movie was on (including ‘the material on the Bull’s pants is making my eyes water’) while the Bull weeps openly and without shame.

**Who put a goddamned fork in the microwave?**

Dorian, who is still getting the hang of things like ‘making my own meals’ and ‘leftovers’ and ‘being in the kitchen’, did. To be fair, it was only the once.

**Who does the silly hands-over-the-eyes “Guess who” thing?**

“Gee, I don’t know, is it the Iron Bull or one of the other qunari with fingers missing who have a key to my apartment? Truly, a mystery for the ages.”

**Who puts their cold hands/feet on their partner?**

Dorian of ~~House Pavus~~ Hothouse Orchid. This is 110% canon in any reality.

**Who had that embarassing Reality TV marathon?**

The Bull hosts reality TV marathon parties. Dorian watches for purely sociological reasons. It’s an academic exercise in observing cultural… okay, even he’s not able to say it with a straight face.

It’s not even fun, really. _He just can’t look away._

**Who laughs more during sex?**

The Bull initially- honestly, at first it was a bit of a struggle to get Dorian to make noise at all, let alone cheerful noises. At one point the Bull realized this, decided that was too sad, and set about trying to make Dorian laugh in bed as often as possible. Eventually, Dorian laughing overtakes the Bull laughing in frequency. 

Not that they were without a few false starts. When he tried tickling Dorian, Dorian used his watchword because _what the actual fuck, Bull, that is not fucking-appropriate behavior._

**WHO IS THE LITTLE SPOON?**

Dorian mostly, because one of them is almost eight feet tall and it’s not him, and also the Bull has difficulty accepting comfort while Dorian has comparatively little trouble demanding to be pampered.

But, as their “something” stretches out and Dorian starts realizing that their thing hasn’t revolved around how fantastic his ass is in a while, he also starts realizing that the Bull has off days every once in a while. Either his bum leg is acting up or something stirred up the brain junk leftover from Seheron and reeducation, and he’ll just be doing an impression of himself rather than being himself. 

Once he starts realizing… well. He still doesn’t quite manage to be the big spoon, because that size difference. But he fits himself around as much of the Bull as he can, which is close enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original post can be found [here](http://hanuueshe.tumblr.com/post/125209763194/otp-meme-nobody-asked-for-it-but-im-doing-it).


	14. Introductory Folkloristics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian and F!Lavellan talk halla.

The Exalted Plains probably wasn’t the sort of place where she should have felt at peace: between the history of the place, the ongoing civil war, and the walking corpse problem, there was plenty for her to feel uneasy about.

But the People were here, and it had been too long since she seen an aravel’s sails, or heard the People’s songs sung around a campfire. There were other Dalish in the Inquisition, of course: Cillian and Neria from Clan Ralaferin, Clan Lavellan’s comrade in borderline flat-earedness, Voth from Sutherland’s company, Dalish from the Chargers, and even Hall, in his own way, was about as Dalish as he was human. But it wasn’t the same as being in a Dalish encampment.

Loranil would join their number, if his Keeper could be persuaded. She would have to warn him of that feeling of being an outsider in an ocean of outsiders when that happened. But first they needed to catch Hanal’ghilan.

The golden halla- by Ghilan’nain, that would be a story to tell. Nehurai would leap between the moons when that letter arrived, presuming they could actually find the blessed beast.

“Maybe you should try calling out to it,” Dorian suggested as they crested over yet another hill. Weren’t plains supposed to be flat? “Aren’t halla supposed to commune with the elves somehow?”

She snorted. “Emphasis on ‘supposed’. The gift is a rare one, and I don’t have it.”

“Wait, seriously?” Dorian asked. Apparently, that was something he’d heard, but dismissed as propaganda. “There are people who can… communicate with halla somehow?”

Lavellan nodded. “The short answer is ‘yes’. The long answer is that while halla are completely capable of understanding both Elvhen and Trade and probably even Tevene, given enough exposure to it, very few elves can understand the halla in return. My son, Nehurai, can do it. So could my husband’s grandfather, or so they say. And before you ask, no, just calling for the halla won’t work, if that could work, then Ithiren wouldn’t have asked us to find her.”

“Are you sure? That woman was in dire need of an herb that was growing a few dozen paces away from her camp, you know.”

Lavellan rolled her eyes, but said nothing. It would take longer to explain the way _vir sulevanan_ had taken on a borderline-joking, halfway-mean tone when humans were around than they had daylight to do it in.

“Is it a form of magic?” Dorian asked after a moment’s silence. “Being able to understand halla?”

“No. My son’s not a mage, that’s my daughter’s gift.”

Dorian made a thoughtful noise. “But it does run in families?”

Lavellan nodded. “It’s said to be a sign of descent from Ghilan’nain.”

“Isn’t that one of your goddesses?” Dorian asked, surprised.

Lavellan nodded. “But she was originally an elf, or so the story goes.”

Dorian cocked his head inquisitively, looking much like one of the clan’s _da’len_ who had decided themselves too old to ask for stories.

He really wasn’t any kind of child. She knew that. But he was a fellow outsider in a sea of outsiders, she continued. “Ghilan’nain was favored by Andruil, the goddess of the hunt: despite the fact that most of the legends we still know paint Andruil to be really fucking scary, she’s said to have been exactly the sort of elf you’d have heard about in the Imperium, gentle and at one with nature. Probably she danced naked under the moonlight and made flowers bloom with her song.”

Dorian snorted. “Better her than Solas, I suppose.”

Lavellan shrugged. They could agree to disagree. “Anyway, one day she came across a hunter who had killed a hawk- a creature beloved of Andruil. Whether that means that all hawks are always taboo to hunt because of Andruil, or if these were hawk which nested on the grounds of a temple to Andruil, or if hunters can’t kill hawks but other elves can is a matter of lively debate, and by lively debate I mean aravels have been lit on fire and at least one Keeper was bludgeoned to death with a lyre over it.”

“What.”

“If you think that’s bad, you should hear the arguments people have over whether or not Falon’Din and Dirthamen were brother or lovers,” Lavellan told him. “Ask Neria for a reenactment sometime, she’s good at those. Anyway, she came across the hunter, and cursed him so that he couldn’t kill another living thing. He was beyond furious, and stalked her, dragged her out into the forest, and bound her like a fresh kill. He could not kill her though, not with her curse still in effect, so he blinded her and left her to die of thirst in the woods.”

“What a charming fellow he sounds to be,” Dorian remarked.

“In some version of the tale, he’s worse,” Lavellan told him. Clan Alerion told a version where the hunter violated Ghilan’nain while she was bound and blinded, and rather than becoming the first halla, she gave birth to it. “Andruil heard her prayers, and sent hares to gnaw through the ropes. But Ghilan’nan could not see to find her way home, so Andruil transformed her into the first halla.”

“Why not simply heal her eyesight, or pick her up and deposit her back home?” Dorian asked.

“Reasons,” Lavellan replied. “It’s presumed that they existed at some point, but were lost in either the conquest of Old Arlathan or the Dales.”

“Ah,” Dorian said.

“I’ve heard speculation that it has something to do with shapeshifting magic, as was practiced in Fereldan before Andraste,” she continued. “Supposedly injuries inflicted in one form won’t translate to another, so turning into a halla not only restored her sight, but could have brought her back from the brink of death. As death is the domain of Falon’Din, she would have been beyond Andruil’s ability to help if she died before reaching home.”

“That makes sense,” Dorian said gamely.

Lavellan nodded. By speculation, of course, she mostly meant her father. Oh, he understood the importance of preserving their culture and search for the truth hidden in every scrap of lost lore they’d managed to hold on to, but he’d been an actor before he’d been Dalish. Incomplete stories didn’t make for an evening’s entertainment.

“Anyway, as a halla she found her way home, but as a halla, she was not able to communicate with her family. So Andruil bestowed upon her a gift before offering her the chance to become one of the Creators. Or rather, it was bestowed upon her family.”

“The ability to speak with halla,” Dorian concluded.

“That’s the one,” she confirmed.

“So, if Ghilan’nain was the first halla, and then ascended to godhood, where did all these other halla come from?” Dorian asked.

“That, nobody knows,” Lavellan told him. Her father hadn’t speculated further, apparently finding the catharsis of Ghilan’nain being able to tell her family goodbye satisfactory enough. Even the Alerion version only had the one halla in it. “If there’s another story, it’s been lost completely.”

They walked in silence for a while, Dorian growing increasingly unsteady on his feet as the sun set and his human eyes began to fail him in the murky light of dusk. They were going to have to head back to the encampment sooner rather than later.

“So, the ability to speak to halla is from your husband’s family, not your own?” Dorian asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“It’s just… Ghilan’nain sounds a great deal like your own name, Ghilan’amin,” he said.

“Well. ‘Ghilan’ is a fairly common name component,” she told him. “It means ‘guide’ in Elvhen.”

It was true. But Ghilan’amin was also her title, not her name. When she’d first woken up in chains to find her hand glowing and a very angry, very armed, shem standing over her accusing her of mass murder, she’d panicked a bit, and given her rank and clan affiliation when she was asked to identify: War Leader of Clan Lavellan. By the time she’d woken again to find that she a) had advisors and b) those advisors were angling to install her as some kind of religious icon in the Chantry, it seemed impolitic to correct the presumption.

Now that she’d actually become friends with these people, things were getting kind of awkward whenever people didn’t stick with her clan name.

Before she could begin her seventeenth round of the particular internal debate, they reach the top of another hill to find it already occupied by Solas, sitting astride the golden halla.

Because of course he was.

“You’ve found Hanal’ghilan,” she observed.

“Indeed I have,” Solas confirmed loftily.

“Smug little asshole,” the Bull grumbled, puffing slightly as he reached the top of the hill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's why Mommy!Lavellan is always referred to as 'Lavellan' in the text of my stories featuring her.


	15. We Dare Not Speak Its Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: a story about one of those Imperial Templars you can have join the Inquisition

He’s seven, and his magic doesn’t manifest. That’s not unusual, but it’s enough for his parents to start having whispered conversations when they think he’s not listening.  
  
He’s ten, and his magic doesn’t manifest, but he has a two-year-old sister who has been having troubling dreams. His parents arrange for her to be tutored, and cancel his thaumaturgy lessons.  
  
He’s thirteen, and his magic doesn’t manifest, won’t ever manifest, because it’s not there at all. But his sister throws a tantrum that causes the rug in the foyer to catch on fire, so that’s alright. The future of House Caduceus is secure. It just won’t be with him.  
  
His parents do what every other Altus does when confronted with such a disappointing child: they throw him to the Templars and strip him of his family name.  
  
He knows it's coming. It's kind of relief to have it all over with- no need to pretend, no need to wait, the worst was over with and he can get on with his life now.

* * *

Ten years later, he finds himself in a secluded library nook with an Altus’ lips wrapped around his cock. Dorian of House Pavus hadn’t been of age for more than a year, but already he had a _reputation_ : apparently he’d jumped right in during his first bacchanalia, and had barely stopped fucking since. There’s a good chance that the college he’s in will kick him out for poor attendance, and the sheer notoriety of his visits to the alienage’s red light districts.  
  
Knight-Commander Asmodeus has assigned him to keep a close eye on Dorian, just in case it turns out he’s become some kind of desire abomination: when they’d heard that, his fellows had slapped him on the back in preemptive congratulations for the sex. He’s a disappointment to House Caduceus in more ways the one, as it happens, a fact which is more well known than his parents would like.  
  
He’s pretty sure that Dorian’s not possessed, though. He’s just an only child with the weight of his House’s future on him, trying to get his fill while he still can.  
  
He can respect that. And do other things with it as well.  


* * *

Knight-Commander Asmodeus takes him off of demon-spotting duty, and it still happens.  
  
Dorian bounces between every college in Vyrantium, including the reform school, before being taken up by Magister Alexius as his apprentice, and it keeps happening.  
  
Dorian moves to Minrathous, but makes frequent trips to Vyrantium, where they continue to fuck whenever given the opportunity.  
  
Once, Dorian comes for an unscheduled, unannounced visit. He runs into him by chance, buried deeply in research concerning Adralla, and for an entire week nothing happens. Then Dorian shows up one night in the new private quarters he has as a Knight-Lieutenant, and kisses him passionately.  
  
It happens again, and when it’s over Dorian doesn’t seem inclined to move, and that’s not something to complain about.  
  
He’s gone in the morning, and he never comes back.

There are all sorts of rumors surrounding Dorian in the following years: they said he’d been captured by slavers, or taken refuge in one of the South’s Circle, or else had himself installed as some noble Marcher’s catamite, or become a Grey Warden, or taken up vows and become Brother Genetivi’s assistant.  
  
Then the Breach happened, and the word ‘Venatori’ is in every other sentence he hears, and half the rest are about Dorian: they say that he betrayed Magister Alexius, that he’s sworn to wipe the Venatori from existence, that he’s thrown his birthright away and renounced his father as a blood mage, that’s he’s one of the highest ranking member of this Inquisition the Venatori so despise, that he’s been adopted by the Dalish, that he’s taken up with a Qunari mercenary.  
  
He would dismiss them, but there are more concrete events than, at least, don’t contradict the new ones: Felix Alexius makes a stirring speech, singing the praises of Inquisitor Lavellan and her fight against Corypheus, an attempt on Magister Tilani ends with the would-be assassin’s magic being suppressed in ways no one can quite figure out, Magister Pavus leaves the Imperium and returns only to recues himself, dogged by rumors of ill-health and worse.  
  
“Well, you can get the information straight from the horses’ mouth,” says Asmodeus, slapping him on the shoulder. “That thieving dwarf has finally surfaced, and she’d in the Inquisition now. You’re up.”  


* * *

They barely make it to Nevarra before they were set upon by the Inquisition’s Templars, who manage to impress upon them the sort of loyalty the Inquisition’s people have towards one another, even a half-mad thieving dwarf who forsook her caste for the chance to study magic.  
  
It’s a tense moment, before he agrees to stand down. Then both parties end up in the only tavern around, which was just awkward.  
  
“How are you going to explain this to the Knight-Commander?” asks Decius despondently.  
  
"I’m not,” he decides, tossing back his ale. “I’m going to join the Inquisition.”  
  
A resounding silence greets his proposal, which is only fair. He’s never spoken of his growing distaste for how people in Tevinter are used and are expected to use each other, so it’s probably a surprise to his men that this show of camaraderie has swayed him.  
  
Besides, he’s had one ear on the Inquisition’s table this entire evening, and he’s heard Dorian’s name a good half-dozen times. It would be good to see him again.  
  
“Ah, fuck it, me too,” says Decius, because he’s always looked after him, and those rumors of an elven father have dampened his career immensely.  
  
No one else joins, but that’s alright. The Inquisition’s group are a little leery when they’re approached, but they’re allowed to keep their weapons and travel with them.  


* * *

He first sees Dorian when they enter the Frostbacks: he’s scouting ahead with the leader of the Templars, a woman named Belinda whose thick Marcher’s brogue is still a bit difficult for him to parse, and a runner, an elf named Gerard who, he gathers, was not a Templar when he joined the Inquisition, but has since been welcomed into their ranks, when they come across the fighting.  
  
He’s heard about the Red Templars of course, but he thought it was exaggeration, soldier’s talk. It turns out to have been an understatement. These are monsters that Dorian is fighting: hulking beasts that nearly double in size as he watches, half-invisible assassins with shards in the place of arms, and perhaps even more disturbingly, warriors who look very human except for the red crystals growing from their bodies.  
  
Dorian’s not on his own: there are three with him, a hulking Qunari brute swinging an axe the size of Dorian like a child’s plaything, and two elven woman, one with a bow and what must be a dwindling supply of grenades, and another determinedly finding every armor crack and crystal flaw with her daggers.  
  
They’re still outnumbered at least five to one.

“Go,” Belinda orders: Gerard is already off and running for the others.  
  
“Sera!” Dorian yells as the elven archer falls. He tries to make a run for it and is nearly run through by one of the assassins. He conjures a barrier just in time, and the elven woman’s unconscious form is shrouded in little green wisps, acting as a lifeward until she can get actual medical attention.  
  
Dorian is stuck in close-quarters combat with the assassin now: the Qunari tries to charge free of the three warriors fighting him to get at him, but it doesn’t quite work.  
  
His bow is in his hands without thought and he shoots, three arrows in the assassin’s neck before the thing even staggers. The Qunari manages to disentangle himself and cleaves the assassin in two.  
  
“We’ve got ‘vints!” the Qunari yells.  
  
The still-conscious elven woman yells something along the lines of “ _Venhedis_ lotsa!” in response and breaks away from her part of the melee to rush at him and cover what she obviously believe to be a source of enemy reinforcements.  
  
Belinda charges into the fray. “He’s on our side,” she tells them, even as he protests “I’m on your side!”  
  
That’s enough to avoid having a Qunari try to stick him with his horns, apparently. They manage to hold their own until Gerard arrives with reinforcements, and it’s all over quickly from there.  
Dorian goes to the fallen elf- Sera, he said, that’s probably her name- and cradles her head in his lap as he fumbles for a health potion.  
  
“ _Festis bei umo canaverum,_ ” he swears, pouring it carefully down her throat so she doesn’t choke. “You’re an archer, you’re supposed to stay at range from enemy blades.”  
  
“You’re one to talk,” he says. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of academic?”  
  
For several long seconds, Dorian gapes. “ _Rilienus_?” he very nearly screeches at long last, which causes the elf in his lap to wake with a spluttering cough.  
  
“Ser Belinda?” asks the other elven woman. She’s older than he’d first thought, and has a lattice of tattoos stretched across her face- a Dalish then.  
  
“The short version, Inquisitor,” says Belinda, helpfully confirming her identity for him, “Is that we impressed the fact that the Inquisition looks after its own on the Imperial Templars so well that two of them followed us home.”  
  
“What are you doing here?” Dorian demanded.  
  
“Dying,” says Sera groggily, smacking his chest with the back of her hand. “Shu’up.”  
  
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Dorian tells her, at a much quieter volume. “And you’re not dying, don’t be so dramatic.”  
  
Rilienus snorts. So does the Qunari, who had moved off to the side at one point and was watching them intently.  
  
There’s another rumor that’s looking more and more likely to be true.  
  
“You can get my full report from Commander Cullen later,” Belinda says, and goes to look after her men, leaving him alone with Dorian and what he's pretty sure are some of Dorian's closest friends, if not more.  
  
“Rilienus,” Dorian implores him.  
  
“The Imperium hasn’t gotten any friendlier since you left, especially not for people like me,” he tells him. “I’d like to fight with people who give a crap about me, for people I actually like.”  
  
It’s hard to tell if the look in Dorian’s eyes is regret or relief. It might be both. “A good a reason as any for joining the Inquisition,” he says, and helps Sera to her feet.  
  
This is it then, he supposes. Nothing to pretend, nothing to wait for, and he can finally get on with the rest of his life.  
  
He doesn’t feel relief the first time he passes into Skyhold’s main keep, though: he feels hope, that the best is yet to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13890.html?thread=56929602#t56929602): 
> 
> "In one of the War Table missions (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dagna:_Overdue_Penalties), it's possible to get a result where two Imperial templars defect to the Inquisition. I want to know what they thought when they met Dorian: as an Altus who despises everything the Magisterium stands for, an openly gay noble who refuses to live a lie and content himself with a pleasure slave, who has befriended elves like Sera, who engages in discussion of arcane magical theory with Solas, who is friendly (or more!) with a Qunari spy, who though critical of southern circles still believes Imperial templars should have more teeth, etc.
> 
> +If the Inquisitor is an elf  
> ++They're still seen as just more Tevinters by most of Skyhold, and Dorian gets very upset on their behalf ("you're not even mages!")  
> +++Some connection with Krem.  
> ++++Very high preference for Dorian/Bull, but m!Lavellan works too. As would Cullen, but that's almost too many templars.  
> +++++Ideal scenario: Ellana Lavellan is the Inquisitor, his relationship with Bull is reasonably serious (not quite at dragon teeth, but definitely at "amatus/kadan"), and good emphasis on his friendships with Cullen and Sera, and how much he respects Solas even if Solas doesn't like him back.
> 
> Optional: Joining in with Dorian and his LI for a night of fun. Or if you want, Dorian could be single when they arrive and he eventually gets together with one of them, that could be interesting."
> 
> It then occurred to me that we don't actually know if Rilienus is a mage, so this got written.


	16. Justinia's Army

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I committed a Hogwarts AU.

_You could do well in Ravenclaw,_ the Sorting Hat had told him when he arrived, a tiny little first year determined to do his father proud. _You might be happier there- you have such a curious mind, such a thirst for knowledge._  
  
But the Pavus family had been Slytherin since the school’s founding, and so he asked for Slytherin instead, and received it.   
  
He regretted that now. His father was disappointed in him anyway, and Slytherin was a festering armpit of inbred corruption, now lousy with people who not only wanted to become Death Eaters, but were publicly enthusiastic about the concept.   
  
True, Corypheus had the run of Hogwarts now, but that did not make joining his little cult of pureblood supremacists any less abhorrent. It just made it more cowardly.   
  
And, of course, there was the fact that because he was a Slytherin, it was that much harder to get people who shared his views of the Death Eaters and their ilk to talk to him.   
  
“This is shady business, boss.”  
  
Dorian recognized that voice, and mentally cursed himself. That was the self-proclaimed Iron Bull (a moniker even the professors called him by), one of the Beaters for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, and someone who was impervious to both the knowledge that you were supposed to beat the bludgers with bats, and the bludgers themselves. Dorian, as one of Slytherin’s Chasers, had had to face off against him more than once. During a game last year, the Bull’s shirt had been torn off of him by a bludger, and Dorian had nearly careened into the stands.   
  
It had been one of the more embarrassing moments of his life, and he had been replaying it constantly ever since.   
  
So, of course the Bull was here. Why wouldn’t the Bull be here? Why on earth wouldn’t Lavellan come meet him with back up, even though he’d asked to meet her alone?  
  
“We’re meeting in a disused classroom after curfew because our mysterious tipper asked for our help, Bull.”  
  
“Yeah, and that’s really shady.”  
  
Well, no point in prevaricating. Dorian cleared his throat. “I believe her point was that the situation is inherently shady, for which I apologize.”  
  
The pair of Hufflepuffs whipped out their wands. Dorian suppressed the urge to retaliate, and raised his empty hands instead.   
  
“I simply could not think of a way to arrange a meeting in a way which did not involve a great deal of shade,” he continued.   
  
Lavellan lowered her wand slightly. The Bull kept his steady.   
  
“Careful boss,” the Bull said. “The pretty ones are always the worst.”  
  
Dorian sighed. “Really now, I’m trying to help. Incidentally… did Professor Fiona make it out alright?”  
  
Lavellan’s wand went back up.   
  
He couldn’t fault her skepticism, really. The Death Eaters were just as brutal towards nonhumans as they were towards Laetans and Muggles, if not more so: a century's worth of society progress undone with the flick of a wand and a few choice bits of propaganda, disrupting countless lives and placing life goals out of reach. Lavellan had been a shoe-in for Head Girl before Justinia’s death, and now it wasn’t even clear if she would be allowed to finish out the term.   
  
That didn’t make the suspicion any less tiresome to deal with.   
  
“You don’t have to tell me where she is,” Dorian said. “I’m just curious as to whether or not she’s safe.”  
  
“She got her people out before Alexius could bind them into service,” Lavellan said reluctantly.

“Well. Good.”

They stood there for a moment, regarding each other suspiciously. Then Dorian sighed.   
  
“The reason I asked for this meeting was to offer my services to your organization,” he said. "Openly, rather than anonymously."  
  
“Why would you do that?” Lavellan asked. “You’re Slytherin, and a pureblood. He has no bone to pick with you.”   
  
“For the same reason I have been anonymously leaving tips for your organization,” Dorian pointed out. “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his Death Eaters and their entirely philosophy is an abscessed cancer upon the wizarding world, and I’d like to remove it.”  
  
“What are you offering, exactly?” Lavellan asked. “More intelligence? Sabotage?”  
  
“You gonna fight with us when things start heating up, or are you just gonna disappear?”  
  
Dorian drew himself up to his full height, which, admittedly, did not make him seem very impressive when the Bull was in the room.   
  
“I intend to help in whatever manner I can,” he said.   
  
“That include fighting against all your Slytherin friends?” the Bull challenged.   
  
“They are no friends of mine,” Dorian snarled back. “They have made their choice. This is mine.”  
  
“Very well then,” Lavellan said, sticking her wand back in her robes. “Let’s talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15060.html?thread=58807764#t58807764) on the kinkmeme asking for AUs.


	17. Daemonic Dimorphism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and I follow up by committing Daemon!AU

In another life, the form Callixtus settled into would have been utterly appropriate. He was a peacock, which, as a bird, signified Dorian's prodigious magical talents, and moreover was the heraldic animal of House Pavus.  
  
The problem was that, strictly speaking, Callixtus should have been a pea _hen_. He should have been female. Failing that, he should have settled into a form less likely to advertise Dorian’s defective status to the rest of society.  
  
“I suppose we might tell people that your daemon settled in a cross-gender fashion,” Father said, and Dorian had protested by disappearing into the alienage for three days straight and missing his final for History of Dwarven-Tevinter Relations, because that was the sort of person he was at the age of seventeen.  
  
And nineteen.  
  
And, for much longer afterwards than he really should have been, probably.  
  
The subject of his daemon’s irritatingly obvious existence remained a point of contention between himself and his family for a long while. It still was, more or less: he simply didn’t have any kind of contact with his family, let alone contentiously. After what they tried to do to him- to Callixtus…  
  
They were going to change him. Change Callixtus, force him into a different shape- a different gender, possibly. The notes he’d found indicated that they were still in the early stages of testing (early stages of testing, he later realized, meant that there must be people- most likely slaves- in the Imperium who hadn’t managed to escape such a fate) and there were all sorts of risks. It might have severed him from Callixtus, made him Tranquil. It might have killed them outright. The shock of his daemon being changed might have rendered him a vegetable. It might have changed his personality along with his sexual preferences.  
  
Of course, it might have turned him into the perfect, obedient son they had always wanted. The son they wanted badly enough that they were willing to- to do that, that unthinkable form of intercession.  
  
He found out. He left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15060.html?thread=58412244#t58412244) that wanted literally any daemon AU.
> 
> There is now a full-length story in the same universe as this snippet: [Theriomorphism](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5042041/chapters/11592385)


	18. Return to Sender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is the return of Snarky!Lavellan.

Despite Cole’s assurances, he didn’t have one fucking clue how to help Dorian, and Dorian didn’t appear to have one fucking clue how to help him.  
  
“This is horrible,” Mahanon said. Dorian grunted in agreement. “This is just… horrible.”  
  
‘This sucks’ he didn’t say, seeing as Dorian had had a pretty strong reaction to the word ‘fellatio’ last night. ‘This is horrible’ just wasn’t as satisfying to say.  
  
They presumably got very drunk, but as that was his last clear memory of the day, he couldn’t really say what else they did. The next thing he was aware of was the Bull slinging him over his shoulder.  
  
“C’mon boss, Dorian’s dick dad only rented the place out for one day,” the Bull said when he groaning in protest.  
  
“Ask ‘em to rent it out longer. Inquisit business,” Mahanon mumbled into the Bull’s back.  
  
“Please don’t mention my father and dick in the same sentence,” Dorian pleaded from the Bull’s other shoulder.  
  
The Bull had the good sense to ignore them and dump their asses into the river to sober up. Mahanon would appreciate that when the hangover finally went away.

* * *

They didn’t avoid each other after that, precisely. That would be silly. Neither one of them had done anything to be ashamed of, except for the part where the Bull had to haul them bodily out of the tavern and dunk them, of course. But that wasn’t the sort of thing that led to them not really speaking to one another for weeks on end.  
  
He wasn’t sure what that was. But, hey, things were busy, the Wardens were being manipulated by a blood mage, Hawke was there, and things. Business. Shit was happening. Shit happened.  
  
And then Leliana sent him a messenger with a very strange bit of information for him, and he had to act on it.  
  
And then interact with Dorian about it.  
  
“So…” Mahanon said, dangling the amulet in front of Dorian.  
  
“That’s- this is the Pavus birthright!” Dorian cried as he took it. “How did you- _why_ \- I mean. Well. Uh. Thank you, Inquisitor. You… didn’t have to do that, truly. I’m- I'd intended to that myself.”  
  
Mahanon looked at him as he fondled the amulet with a somewhat guilty expression on his face.  
  
“Did I miss some kind of weird Vint thing here?” Mahanon asked.  
  
“I- well,” Dorian sighed, his shoulders slumped. “Actually, yes, and I would very much like it if you continued to keep missing it.”  
  
“And I’d like it if you gave me an answer that made sense,” Mahanon retorted.  
  
Dorian sighed again. “Not here.”  
  
“Alright. How about my quarters?”  
  
Dorian let out a bitter, laughing snort but nodded, and followed him.

It wasn’t until they’d actually arrived that Mahanon remembered that his quarters had a bed. And a large tub. And a balcony overlooking a scenic vista. And wow, this was actually a really suggestive place for him to have… suggested…  
  
Hopefully he wasn’t blushing. That would just make this about ten times more awkward, and you could already spitroast the amount of awkward they had going on here.

“Here we are,” Mahanon pointed out.  
  
“Yes,” Dorian said, looking anywhere but him.  
  
“You can start giving me those sense-making answers at any time.”  
  
Dorian remained silent.  
  
“Or you could just start to talk and we could work our way up to sense, that’s a thing that we could-”  
  
“You’re still considered a slave, under Tevinter law,” Dorian blurted out.  
  
At least that got rid of all the awkward sexual tension.  
  
“Or rather, you’re considered a runaway slave. _Fugutivus_. It’s its own distinctive class of slave, one that tends to have a poor life expectancy. Good for kicking,” Dorian growled, turning to face him for the first time since he started talking. “Do you know- I didn’t even _think_ to question it until you, I didn’t even _consider_ that it might be wrong and-” He cut himself off with another growl and began to pace in front of the staircase. “I… apologize. This isn’t about me. It’s more your right to be angry over it than mine, and I do know that.”  
  
“I would like to know what this has to do with your fancy magister amulet,” Mahanon pointed out. He sounded only slightly strangled, and gave himself a mental pat on the back over it.  
  
“It’s… proof, that I am the heir of House Pavus, and of age, and therefore have some control over… properties…”  
  
Mahanon made a series of confused “eh?” kind of noises, because there was no way he meant that like it sounded.  
  
“I was hoping that you wouldn’t have to find out- or that I could at least arrange things so that when you did find out, I would have already taken care of it. I don’t want you to feel indebted to anyone over this, particularly not me.”  
  
“Sense, Dorian,” Mahanon managed. “You’re not making a lot of it.”  
  
“I was hoping to get you freed, legally speaking,” Dorian finally explained. “With this, I can prove that I can act as a full-fledged member of House Pavus, and get your liberati papers from the embassy in Denerim. That means that my father doesn’t have a legal leg to stand upon if he wants to cause trouble by trying to reclaim you, and that things don’t become even more diplomatically… strained with Tevinter.”  
  
“Oh,” Mahanon said.  
  
It hadn’t actually occurred to him that being a slave in Tevinter might have diplomatic repercussions. That part of his life had ended well over three years ago by now, and he’d walked out of it with Dorian. The End.  
  
…except for the part where Halward fucking Pavus had shown up out of the blue. Yeah, that probably should have been a clue.  
  
“Well,” Mahanon said. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever tried to hide that they were doing from me.”  
  
“Oh, don’t think for a moment my motives were purely selfless,” Dorian assured him. “I have no doubt that if word got around that you’d belonged to my family, things would get much frostier for me.”  
  
“Seriously? Still? After everything?” Mahanon asked.  
  
“Well, people have thawed somewhat considered the lack of missing children to be blamed upon blood magic rituals I am doubtlessly used to conducting, but-”  
  
“Dorian,” Mahanon interrupted. “There were a lot of Inquisition soldiers surrounding the tavern that day. I’m sure some of the scouts eavesdropped, and everyone definitely saw you light your father on fire. They already know.”  
  
Dorian looked as though he was having an epiphany and a heart attack all at the same time.  
  
“Dorian?” Mahanon checked.  
  
“That would explain a few… behavioral anomalies of late,” Dorian said, giving himself a shake. “And I believe I owe Dennet an apology. I’ll let you know when I have your papers.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Mahanon said as Dorian left. “See you around.”


	19. The Pointy End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Adoribull Prompt Sunday! [adoribullness](http://adoribullness.tumblr.com/) prompted me with "dorian surprises bull with his swordfighting skills".

“Well, of course I know how to use a sword,” Dorian scoffed. “I’m a necromancer.”

That didn’t make sense to the Bull. That didn’t make sense to anyone. Next to him, the boss squinted. Propped up against his chest, Sera groaned.

“Quit talking piss and make sense,” she grunted. Healing potions always seemed to heal her headaches last.

Dorian heaved a put upon sigh. “Look. I am a necromancer. What is it that necromancers are most known for?”

“Creepy rotting skeleton armies of suck?” Sera replied.

“Precisely!” Dorian replied. “And, what do most armies outfit their rank and file with?”

“Swords?” Lavellan guessed, in the tone of voice which suggested that she wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the answer was actually a unicorn.

“And should the army of undead I raise have no experience with a sword, where, pray tell, will my rotting minions get the knowledge of how to swing a sword?” he asked. He didn’t wait for them to answer before he pointed to his face. “Me.”

Lavellan considered that for a moment before shrugged. “Do you want to keep the sword?”

“Maker no!” Dorian scoffed, dropping the sword as though it had burned him. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re running low on mana?” Lavellan asked. “Isn’t that why you picked it up in the first place?”

“I’m fine now!” Dorian protested.

“How about you, Sera, are you fine too?”

Sera wrinkled her face up, but nodded.

“Bull?”

“I’m good, boss.”

“Then let’s move on.”

* * *

Later, when they’d turned in for the night, the Bull thought of something. “Hey, Dorian.”

“And here I thought that was stripweed,” Dorian replied.

“Do you ever practice your swordsmanship?”

Dorian didn’t answer. It was too dark for the Bull to be able to tell whether that was because he did and didn’t want the Bull to see it, or if he didn’t but knew he should.

The Bull would guess, from the ease with which he dispatched that last Templar, that he’d been practicing, but Dorian had certainly surprised him before.

Only one way to find out. “You should practice with the Chargers some time. Give yourself something to test yourself against besides a stationary dummy.”

Dorian snorted. “And grant your men the opportunity to dislocate a shoulder and call it a training accident?”

The Bull frowned. “They wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t they?”

The Bull knew a lot of the Inquisition’s soldiers were kind of… pissed about having a ‘Vint on their side. People spat on him, rude things were said, that Chantry mother kept watching him like he might go maleifcar on them, but he didn’t think that the Chargers were a part of that. “Have my boys been giving you shit?”

“No,” Dorian said. “Not precisely.”

“And precisely?”

Dorian sighed. “There was a bit of… ribbing, I suppose? Not undeservedly. I thought I knew the extent of my homeland’s problems, but apparently I still have much to learn.”

“That doesn’t sound like a dislocated shoulder type of situation,” the Bull pointed out.

“I’d rather not run the risk, to be frank,” Dorian replied.

“So train with me then,” the Bull offered. “I’m not going to dislocate your shoulder when I need you to set the evil ‘Vints trying to kill me on fire.”

Dorian huffed. The Bull waited.

“I’ll…consider it,” he said at last.

The Bull shrugged. He couldn’t ask Dorian for anything more than that.


	20. Young/Adult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian and his father have lunch.

The Arcanist Hall was an exclusive establishment for the elite and scholastically-inclined denizens of Minrathous. Visitors from the Shaperate often gave demonstrations in the exclave of the Ambassadoria located in the cellar; mages from outside the Imperiums borders were frequently seen there, either to give demonstrations of their rustic customs, or to see a glimpse of what they were missing. For citizens of the Imperium, there were only two ways to get inside: invitation, or membership, either or which could only be issued by sitting members of the Hall’s synod.

Once upon a time, Dorian would have been willing to give his right arm for an afternoon here. Now, he had a full membership himself, courtesy of his work with Alexius.

His father had not been informed of that, apparently.

“I’m surprised to find you so blasé,” Father said, as the ostiary scrutinized his invitation. He wasn't one of the Hall’s employees that Dorian had previously interacted with, he thought. It was a pity, almost. He’d had a fantasy built up in his head of this conversation being interrupted by someone who wanted to speak with him about the demonstration he would be assisting Alexius with here next week, but that was looking less and less likely. Though, he supposed that was probably for the best. The moment to reveal his membership gracefully had likely already come and gone. “You were always begging to come here as a child.”

“I am no longer a child,” Dorian pointed out.

“Allegedly,” Father retorted.

It would be so easy to end it here. He could start an argument, be rude and loud about his independence from Father right in front of the ostiary and the other guests waiting in line to be granted entry. Father would declare it time to leave, and Dorian could slink back to the Alexius estate, no worse for wear.

That would hardly support his argument that he wasn’t a child however. Besides, he was due to assist Alexius with a demonstration here next week.

“Well, if you wish to think of the law of the Imperium as alleged, then certainly, I am allegedly no longer a child,” Dorian replied instead.

Father made no reply of his own, merely waited until the ostiary deigned it appropriate to wave them through.

They avoided the lecture halls and the conference rooms and the special exhibits, or rather, Father pointedly refused to so much as glance in their direction and for the time being Dorian followed his example. Likely, Dorian mused, the invitation Father had didn’t extend any farther than the main portion of the Hall. He wondered what he had given in exchange for it: certainly, this was not his usual scene. Oh, his father was a man of no small influence, but his influence was concentrated in the matters of foreign affairs: the war with the Qunari, the mages fleeing north from their circle-prisons, trade and diplomacy with Nevarra, the Anderfells, Antiva, and Rivain. Academia was not generally under his purview, and watching him now Dorian was struck by how out of place he was.

“Is there anywhere in particular you wish to go?” Dorian asked. “There’s an exhibit on Qunari artifacts on the second story, and some kind of display of dwarven war machines in the first sub-level.”

“I thought we might dine at the café on the main promenade,” Father said.

The café was dismal: a narrow selection and just short of criminally overpriced. There were better places to dine upstairs, restricted to members of the Hall. Dorian had his membership emblem with him. He could show it to one of the spatharii guarding the entrances and show his father what his life was like now.

‘ _Look, Father_ ,’ he might say. ‘ _I have a life here, a life doing important work, just as you do_.’

Father would likely take it as an insult, that he made Father go through whatever trade of favors he had gone through to get his invitation (never mind that he hadn’t known about it until they were practically on the Hall’s doorstep) when he could have come whenever he wanted.

He was trying to appreciate the effort Father had apparently gone through to make this meeting a pleasant one. ‘Trying’ was a rather polysemous choice of word in this case.

“You won’t even bother with trying to see some of the sights first?” Dorian asked.

Father sighed heavily. “Must you always cause such a scene?”

Dorian bit back his first instinctual, angry retort: that asking a simply question hardly constituted making a scene. Trying, this was him, trying. “No, actually, I don’t. Straight to business, then?”

“I thought we might eat first.”

That was probably as close to an apology as he was going to get.

* * *

One of the uniformly waifish slaves that staffed the main café took their order and returned with the food they requested not a quarter of an hour later. Conversation up until that point had been stilted and awkward, and Dorian was uncharacteristically grateful for the excuse to let it die.

Dorian unhurriedly chewed his kofte sandwich, observing the people passing by: apprentices talking excitedly amongst themselves, a circle visit by Enchanter Laskaris of the Minrathous Circle and his pupils for Practical Oneirology, bodyguards and scribes dutifully following their owners around as they went about their business. There was something immensely comforting about the banal normalcy of it all, if one could simply ignore his dining companion.

“I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to subject I raised during our last meeting?” Father asked.

“I have,” Dorian sighed, turning his attention away from the promenade. “And it remains as impossible now as it had been then.”

Father sighed again, carefully wiping his mouth and placing his napkin on his plate. In an instant, one of the café’s slaves returned to collect it.

“Shall I take your plate, my lord?” she asked him.

“He’s finished,” Father told her.

“No, I am not,” Dorian corrected.

The slave hovered, unsure. Dorian ignored her, as Father fixed him with a long-suffering look.

“You simply can’t resist being contrary, can you?”

Was speaking to his father such a glyphfield when he was a child? He didn’t recall it being so.

“No more than you could resist dictating the terms of my life, it seems,” Dorian retorted.

Father’s eyes hardened, and just like that, the situation was no longer that of trying, but that of a battle joined. Dorian found himself relieved and disappointed in equal measure. He might not be able to hold a civil conversation with his own father, but at least now he could get it out in the open.

“What is your plan, exactly?” he asked. “Do you expect to stay here, in Minrathous, as Alexius’ apprentice in perpetuity?”

“No, of course not,” Dorian retorted. “I intend to be a full enchanter by twenty-five, and a senior enchanter before thirty.”

Father scoffed. “Oh, is that what your intentions are now?”

“Yes, they are,” Dorian confirmed. “I suppose I should expect the information to surprise you. We’ve only ever discussed what my intentions are not previously.”

“And you maintain that-”

“I will not marry,” Dorian finished for him. “Yes, I do maintain it. In addition to my ingrained disinclinations, there simply wouldn’t be enough time to both pursue my career and put the effort in to maintain the farce.”

He was expecting some kind of pointed remark about how there would be plenty of time if he’d only applied himself more when he was young instead of being expelled from every Circle in the Imperium, but that wasn’t what happened.

“Is that the only new development?” Father asked.

“What else could there be?” Dorian challenged. He wasn’t passed out in the streets drunk, he wasn’t caterwauling through the brothels anymore, he hadn’t had so much caused a dowager’s scarf to flutter in shock for months. If nothing else, he would have expected Father to notice _that_.

“Magister Alexius has a son, does he not?”

Dorian was thrown by sudden change in topic. “Yes. Felix Alexius, his heir.”

“There are rumors about him,” Father told him. “They say he is little better than a Soporatus.”

“Really, Father?” Dorian asked, disappointed. “Where’s the man who taught me to respect the skills of others, no matter their form? Where’s the man who argued for increased protections for the Soporati, for increased aid to Soporati refugee. Besides, it’s hardly a rumor: I think that Felix’ lack of magical talent is well-known enough by now to qualify as fact.”

“It’s one thing to support the rights of a person, and quite another to become associated with them,” Father argued.

“He’s quite brilliant, I’ll have you know. A gifted mathematician. He worked on the new sanitation facility for the western aqueducts. You approved its addition to the restoration process just last month.”

“A sewage treatment facility,” Father sneered.

“I believe ‘an innovation that will have a great and positive impact upon the health of all our citizens’ is how you put it before the Senate,” Dorian reminded him. “And that’s just the beginning. He’s received an invitation from the Pontiff of Transportation himself to work on maintain our highways. He’s working on a way to make it easier to build houses, and to overhaul ships. He’s also an excellent kaval player.”

“So it is like that,” Father said gravely.

“Like-” Dorian began, and then cut himself off entirely. “ _Father_.”

“Dorian, the least you could do would be to show some awareness of the way your proclivities leave you open to manipulation,” Father continued. “Think this through: Felix cannot be Alexius’ heir, not with his talents, but you could, and leave House Pavus heirless in the process.”

“Is that what you think?” Dorian demanded. _You know nothing about the members of House Alexius_ , is what he’d been intending to say.

“To what other end would have taken you in as he did?”

_You know nothing about me._

It might be worth noting at this juncture that he had, in fact, finished his meal, and the only thing left on his plate was the sauce. As he flipped the table, it crashed into his father, leaving ugly smears down the front of his robes. He hoped, viciously, that it stained.

Around them, the Hall had fallen silent.

Dorian turned to the slave, who had been standing next to their table this entire time, and had now taken two steps back, her hands clapped over her mouth.

“My apologies for the mess,” he told her. “If there were any lasting damages made, tell your master that he can find me at the Alexius Estate for recompense.”

He turned and walked away without another word. He made it perhaps ten feet before his father called after him, a sharp reprimanding “Dorian!”

Dorian halted, and then gave in to the temptation to make this scene even uglier. “Fuck. Off. Father,” he grit out.

He continued forward, fumbling for his emblem as he did. He made sure to take the members-only way off the promenade in full view of his father as he left.


	21. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are TRESPASSER SPOILERS:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Namely, the villa and the magical skype crystal.

The villa originally had little going for it but walls, a roof, and a bed. The bed was the biggest draw. After months of having to content themselves with only the sound of each other’s voices over the sending crystal, all they wanted to do was touch one another, whether that was the rough, curtain-burning fucking they’d been infamous for in the Inquisition, or merely staying pressed together, enjoying the feel of skin on skin after so long apart.

And then the Bull was injured, seriously enough to require serious bed rest, and the only place for it was the villa. Dorian panicked a bit, tried to look like he wasn’t panicking while tying up loose ends, and hurried his way down to the villa with an entire three days in his schedule cleared.

Somehow or another, he’d never considered that the Chargers were also staying there. He’d known that they were looking after him, of course, but the thought that they must also necessarily be at the villa never entered his head until the reality was upon him.

“A bed, Altus. Literally the only piece of furniture in this entire mansion was a bed,” Krem greeted him. “What the fuck?”

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m terrible, how is he?” Dorian asked.

“I’m fine, Dorian,” the Bull called from the bedroom window. “I told you I was fine on the sending crystal two hours ago.”

“Get back in bed, chief!” was the immediate chorused reply from the Chargers.

The Chargers had managed to collect of a hodge-podge of furniture from somewhere, and they left it in the villa when the Bull was well enough to travel again. Word got out about their furniture situation, and somehow or another when they got back to the border they found the front porch of the villa piled high with boxes.

The process of isolating and checking each box for booby-traps was arduous and nerve-wracking. The only thing that made it worth it was opening the second-to-last box and finding that Lavellan had sent them a bed whose footboard consisted of a pair of statues of naked Qunari men.

‘There’s a corresponding throne too, if you want it,’ read the enclosed note. ‘It might make a decent armchair.’

“You could have warned us this was waiting for us,” Dorian said over the sending crystal that night. “We spent hours making sure the furniture wasn’t going to explode in our faces. I still don’t know how we’re meant to get this all inside.”

“You didn’t get Sera’s note?” was her slightly confused reply.

Sera’s note, along with a bewildering, mechanized, vaguely chair-shaped _something_ arrived the following morning.

Having furniture meant having a lot of things which collected dust, which necessitated hiring a Jenny-approved housekeeper, which necessitated keeping the place stocked, and from there, it was almost inevitable: Dorian found that he could arrange for days away from the politics of Tevinter instead of hours, and the villa became less a place with their bed in it and more-

He realized it that day he arrived to find several delicate pink roses spilling over the garden wall. _The Bull must have planted those_ , he thought, with a terrible swell of emotion, and the sound of digging from the other side of the wall stopped.

The Bull stood up. He was missing part of his left horn and his whiskers had gone white. Neither of these things were new, but it suddenly seemed like they were, new and just now slotting into place.

“Hey stranger,” the Bull greeted him, leaning over the wall. “What brings you to these parts?”

“I’m home,” Dorian said, and was appalled to find that he was crying.

“I can’t be Archon, you know,” he tried to explain later. “I’m a magister, it’s forbidden, and honestly that’s one law I see no reason to change. Probably the Lucerni candidate will end up being Calpernia.”

“The former Venatori?”

“We could do worse. I don’t think we will, though. Do worse, that is. I think- I think we’re going to succeed.”

“All the Imperium’s problems solved?” the Bull teased.

“No, of course not,” Dorian snapped. He was not in the mood for teasing, no matter how gentle. “But- but I think we’re reaching the end of what I can do with the Lucerni. I think I might start stepping back a little, in preparation for stepping aside.”

The Bull had gone very still beneath him. Dorian bit down on the urge to demand an answer.

“You know that I’m still running the Chargers, right?”

“Yes.” Though, once again, he hadn’t thought through the implications. He wasn’t the only one with a life that kept them away from here, and he wouldn’t ask the Bull to give that up any more than the Bull had asked him to give up Tevinter. “I could go with you. I’m sure you could use another ‘archer’ at times.”

“Kadan,” the Bull said, and Dorian lifted his head up from his chest to meet his eye. It was suspiciously bright, but the Bull was smiling. “Do you think I could convince Krem that I really want him to change the name to ‘Krem’s Puffs’?”

Dorian kissed him, which hopefully was answer enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [JustJasper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper), who prompted me with the word 'promise'.


	22. Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Seheron has active volcanoes.

There were volcanoes on Seheron- active ones, who, every few years, would boil over in lava and smoke and fire and death.

Growing up in Qarinus, Dorian was too far away to see more than the smudge of smoke on the horizon, and even then, it was often days before he heard whether or not it was the volcanoes or gaatlok. Back then, it was all academic, a diversion, a safe, neutral topic to speak of while a various dinner parties and social gatherings.

_“Oh, have you heard? Mount Vesaevus has erupted again.”_

_“Maker, and it looked like it was going to be such a promising year for the Qarinus vineyards. The acidity will completely ruin the crop- it won’t even be fit for vinegar.”_

That sort of thing.

Dorian hadn’t been completely unaware that it had other consequences, of course. He’d read the famous poem about the eruption in -200 Ancient that had buried Oplontis City under a mountain of ash, and moreover, it was difficult to overlook the influx of refugees that clamored desperately out of Nocen Sea with every new volcanic belch. But it was one of many aspects of life in Tevinter that he’d never given much thought to, when there was so much else to rail against.

“I hope all this rain doesn’t cause a mudslide,” the Bull said nervously.

“What’s this? Have we finally found a context in which you wouldn’t enjoy being covered in filth?” Dorian asked.

“Do you know what a lahar is?” the Bull asked him.

“Should I?”

“It’s a mudslide creating by a volcano erupting. It gets nasty: walls get torn down, people drown, entire villages get buried, and when it finally stops moving it’s like concrete. Every few years one of the volcanoes on Seheron would go off, and then we’d have a natural disaster to deal with on top of all the blood demon crap.”

“Ah,” Dorian replied, bereft of anything intelligent to say.

“If you really want to see me covered in filth, though, my door’s always open,” the Bull said.

“ _Vishante kaffas_ ,” Dorian swore.

The Bull chuckled, giving no indication that he considered the exchange to be anything more than an opportunity to indulge in his increasingly lewd mock-flirtations. It was one of an alarming number of things which bothered him about the Bull: nothing seemed sacred to him, or at least, he gave no indication of what was sacred to him. Seheron didn’t bother him, the popular perception of the Qunari as bestial war machines didn’t bother him, Dorian’s love for his homeland- the country the Bull had spent years fighting- didn’t bother him. But how could it not? How could he just smile and accept the judgment of others, without offering any defense? It set Dorian’s teeth on edge.

It took some days to clear the lake in Crestwood of its rift problem, cold wet days. They were all exhausted when they finally emerged victorious from the cave, and Lavellan dismissed them to Caer Bronach while she trudged down to the village proper with fresh support, to demand answers from the mayor.

“Kind of underwhelming, isn’t it?” the Bull said.

“Are you hoping to meet up with that dragon again?” Dorian demanded. “I would recommend _not_. Or, more realistically, only after a bath and a good night’s rest.”

“Nah. I meant the sunrise.”

Dorian blinked at him. “The sunrise… underwhelms you.”

“The sunrises were always really pretty, after a volcano erupted. It was sort of like a reward for all the shit was going on. The sun would come up, and it would be glorious.” The Bull shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to work with demon crap, I guess. It’s not even pink.”

Dorian realized with a start that he knew exactly what the Bull was talking about. Sunrises weren’t his forte- while he’d certainly partied straight through until dawn often enough, he’d been in habit of sleeping until noon afterwards. Sometimes he’d even slept in public, on benches, even propped up on stoops like some kind of vagrant. He’d been that determined not to care.

When he’d finally gathered his courage and run, he’d done so before dawn. He’d watched the sun come up- the sunrise had been resplendent, marred only by the smoke he could see on the horizon. _Gaatlok or volcano?_ He supposed he had his answer now.

“Well. I’m afraid you’ll have to content yourself with the sight of me this morning,” Dorian said, before thinking better of it. “You may wish to wait until I’ve had a chance to bathe before taking in your fill.”

The Bull smirked. “Are you suggesting that we share a tub?”

“Are you suggesting familiarity with bathing?” Dorian retorted. “Now, that would be something to see.”

The Bull’s smirk deepened. “Is that so?” he nearly purred, taking a half-step closer.

“Perhaps another time when I’m not going to blink and fall asleep,” Dorian deferred, and retreated before he could say anything more incriminating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [coveredinfeels](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coveredinfeels/pseuds/coveredinfeels), who prompted me with the word 'sunrise'.


	23. Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sera and F!Lavellan have a talk in Orzammar.

In terms of stressful state visits, Orzammar was thus far rating solidly between Denerim (where Bann Shianni was more than willing to give her all sorts of insider information and King Alistair had a refreshing lack of pretense) and Halamshiral (which was in Orlais). King Bhelen was shrewd and manipulative, while his Queen, Rica, was intelligent and sincere: their children were not yet grown, the eldest being only thirteen.

That made them the perfect age to look up to Sera, who was quite content to be looked up to and whisk them off on all sorts of mayhem before being royalty made them the sort of people who would deserve having their breeches stolen.

“Though, lots of those noble-type pisspots don’t consider Sereda and Natia to be noble, coz their mother’s born ‘castless’ and they get their castiness from their mother, because they’re girls. Frigging stupid, is what it is. The castiness _and_ the getting it. What do you suppose happens to dwarves who are like Krem, with having innie bits while really being an outie and such?”

“At a guess? Nothing good.”

“No shite,” Sera snorted, shifting around in her chair so that her feet pushing against the wall. “I suppose the Dalish are shite too, what with the whole ‘drop trou and rebuild the empire’ thingy, yeah? That’s what you and baldy fart-face were after, right?”

“Sera, I’m almost fifty years old,” she told her. “I’m not giving birth to anything, let alone an empire.”

Sera stuck out her tongue. “But you’re still shite at that, yeah?”

It had been a while since Sera had tried to pick a fight over her ‘elfiness’- since before Solas left, since just after she returned from the Well of Mythal, actually. It was especially weird to hear her speak up in defense of a topic she knew for a fact Sera had never considered a possibility until recently. Lavellan took a moment to ponder what she was up to now.

“It depends on the clan,” she began, hedging for time. “Some are quite strict, and place a great deal of emphasis on _vir assan_ , insisting that-”

Sera blew a raspberry. “You’re talking, but all I hear is shite. Doesn’t matter what you dress it up as, it’s shite. What should it matter, what you are? You are what you are, people shouldn’t need you to be something else to- to- anyway, it’s all shite. I don’t like it. Do you think bees would do good down here?”

“Probably not for very long, considering there are no flowers for them,” Lavellan pointed out.

“Heh. Maybe I should look into those deepstalker thingies,” Sera mused. “That’d show him.”

Sera popped upright, and Lavellan suddenly understood where she was coming from.

“Dagna wouldn’t thank you for harming her father,” she said.

Sera stopped short, and then turned around with a sniff. “Wasn’t going to harm him. Scare him, maybe. He should be scared to hurt her like he is. He should be. Then maybe he’d stop.”

“I don’t think it works like that, unfortunately,” she pointed out. “And even if it did, I don’t think Dagna would thank you for it.”

Sera blew another raspberry, but it was the kind of raspberry that signaled that she wanted to go back to having a truce. “But you know this is all shite, yeah?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Lavellan agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [zythepsary](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zythepsary/pseuds/zythepsary) who prompted me with "dust". 
> 
> Which reminded me of dwarves, which lead to this, which had absolutely nothing to do with dust.


	24. Visceral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a reaver and a necromancer are a terrifying combination.

Here’s the thing: Dorian knows the mechanics of growing fat on another’s death, but not the practice. Not until he leaves Tevinter, at least: duels were one-on-one affairs, and the other person’s death always ended it, and brawling in the street was far more likely to result in the other parties running away at the first fireball than actual death.

Death came later. Death was a slave he’d seen almost every day he’d ever spent at home but never learned the name of bleeding out before his eyes, mere practice for a ritual he still hoped he never intends to perform. Death was the spirits, drawn to the moment, spirits that he intended to bind, but who leapt through the Veil at Dorian’s commands instead: they bolstered his power, they stood ready to heal and rejuvenate him, to fight with him, or even for him. The slave was dead, but the slave was never his enemy: his father was, and he’d still been standing.

Later, once the horror of what his father had done had faded, or rather, been successful repressed, he would be disgusted by the way he’d gained power from something so abhorrent, had taken it so easily. It was easier to dwell on his own shortcomings than those of his father.

* * *

Here’s the thing: the Qunari don’t do reavers. It’s too messy, too wasteful, too _bas_. You didn’t fight angry unless you wanted to end up dead. You didn’t make a show of how badass you were just to see the other guy flinch. You did your job, and you did it efficiently and without ego. _Anaan essam Qun_.

But he’d managed to pick up on the same techniques all the same, somehow. He wasn’t sure how that happened, exactly. He knew that it wasn’t how people fought, really, but why not? Why shouldn’t he learn to take what that island threw at him, accept the pain and the anger and use it? Why shouldn’t he take the blows that would have killed his guys and enjoy the fear on the faces of the ‘vints or the rebels or the Tal-Vashoth trying to take him out? Why shouldn’t he come out of each fight bleeding in a half dozen places and laughing with his teeth bared? Wasn’t it better to enjoy his job and the people he was with instead of being dissatisfied with his role? Wasn’t that why the _tamassrans_ had sent him to Seheron in the first place, had kept him there? Because he was suited for that kind of thing?

The day he’d snapped at the _vidathiss_ , she’d remained calm, and had pointed him right back to the truth: _maraas shokra_. Pain was a constant in a soldier’s life, but so was discipline. You don’t get angry, and you especially don’t let that anger drive your actions.

“You did well, to come here,” she praised him, and then left him alone for three days.

* * *

Here’s the thing: when all is said and done, it was useful, being what they were, especially when it came to fighting in a war with the hole in the sky.

The Kaltenzahn shrieked, summoning her brood to her defense. A dragonling raked its claws down the Bull’s arm, and he bellowed, unleashing a frenzy of blows on it even as Dorian conjured a spirit mark around it. The dragonling cried out under the onslaught, gore and ichor splattering with every slice. The Bull could feel it when it died; so could Dorian, who shunted the spirit into the dragonling for a short period, it’s corpse dragging itself along after the Bull as he turn to its mother, set upon a rampage even as Dorian siphoned energy into his wounds, healing them.

She didn’t stand a chance.

* * *

Here’s one last thing:

“You were glorious back there.”

“You didn’t do terribly yourself, I suppose.”

There was blood on Dorian’s teeth and the Bull wanted to lick it off. There was a long scratch on the Bull’s chest, and Dorian wanted to press his hand over it.

They didn’t stand a chance either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for irrumatrix, who prompted me with the word 'visceral'.


	25. Anniversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian and the Bull have been somethinging for over a year.

_We’ve been doing this for over a year now._

The thought struck him when he was on his knees. Specifically, he was on his knees, with his cheek resting against the Bull’s thigh, panting harshly as he recovered from giving what was, if he did say so himself, a spectacular blowjob.

It was not the most opportune moment for such thoughts, all the more so for the way his own cock was still throbbing between his legs. It was also true. Dorian had plucked up enough courage, between the Inquisitor’s support in the face of his father reappearance in his life and the leftover Summerday wine, to come knocking on the Bull’s door at the end of Bloomingtide, and it was Justinian now.

It had been over a year. He’d missed their anniversary, he supposed, though he wasn’t sure that ‘we were both buzzed and the sex was better than either of us imagined it would be’ was something he particularly wanted to celebrate.

Still. Over a year. That was a something in and of itself, something he did actually want to celebrate, even if this particular milestone was lacking in the proper importance.

The Bull’s fingers, which had been carding through his hair, slid down farther to cup his face. “Hey. You doing alright down there, kadan?” he asked.

“I could be better,” Dorian said, standing so he could slide into the Bull’s lap.

* * *

Dorian made a list- mentally, because knowing his luck if he wrote the list down it would somehow find its way into the barracks and start making rounds amongst the soldiers, and this wasn’t something which required that wide an audience.

-First time saying amatus

-First time saying amatus, deliberately

-First time saying kadan

-Explanation of what amatus and kadan meant

-The Inquisitor’s awkward questions sparking everyone else’s awkward questions

-First time spending the night

-First time spending the night without sex or illness/injury

The problem was, he reflected, that he was a bit spoiled for choice when it came to occasions he wished to celebrate the anniversary of.

* * *

And then Krem enlisted his help for planning the Bull’s birthday party.

“But it’s more than half a year until his birthday!” Dorian protested. “I mean- it is in Drakonis, isn’t it?” He’d been sure of it. He hadn’t noticed the Bull’s birthday until the party was already upon him, but he’d made certain to note it, so he could get a present for him next year.

Krem laughed, not entirely mockingly. “Come on, Altus, think about it. What’s the point of keeping track of birthdays under the Qun?”

“Keeping track of how old people are?” Dorian pointed out.

“Maybe the tamassrans keep records, but they don’t share them. Chief knows he’s coming up on forty, but that about it, so every few months we just pick a day and go all out.”

“I see,” Dorian said. “And the most recent upcoming birthday is to be..?”

“Next Saturday,” Krem told him. “You in?”

“Naturally,” Dorian said. “I could hardly leave the wine selection to you, could I?”

Krem teased him the entire way back to the corner of the garden the Chargers had commandeered for their party planning session, but Dorian found he didn’t mind. After all, he now had a very good idea what he was going to do for their anniversary.

Or rather, _anniversaries_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [amurderof](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof) who prompted me with the word 'anniversary'.


	26. Paraphernalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: the Bull muses about having a permanent home and Dorian stealth moves in.

The Bull had never quite lived in a place like Skyhold before. He had dormitories growing up, and the barracks under the Qun (though on Seheron there had never been any place safe enough to be considered barracks) and then he’d been a mercenary. They’d stayed at inns, or on camps. They’d never had a permanent base of operations, let alone one with a tavern.

It was kind of nice, though. He had the same bed to look forward to when he came back to Skyhold, in the same room, living next to the same people and who made the same noises. The War Council had managed to hammer out a system for disseminating supplies that was a mix of military requisitionary, Dalish resource sharing, and civilian market places, so there was always plenty of hot food and people left milk outside his door in the morning. Maids came along to collect the garbage, return the laundry, and sweep the floors. Cabot kept the ale flowing and Maryden kept people’s spirits up and the Bull?

The Bull got used to it. It was kind of comforting, knowing exactly where he would be sleeping and where to find his next meal and not to have to worry about supplies or lodgings. People knew where to find him, and he knew where to find people.

And, of course, ‘people’ included Dorian.

* * *

“You should really get that hole in the ceiling fixed.”

“I like it.”

“It’s cold.”

“We’re in the middle of the mountains. It’s always going to be cold.”

“It doesn’t need to be this cold.”

“Why don’t you fix it?”

“Would you let me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, this is your room. If you’ve got any particular attachment to that hole I wouldn’t want to overstep my bounds.”

“I like the view. Sometimes it’s nice to get a bit of a breeze in. But if you want to do the work…”

“I wasn’t thinking of doing the work yourself, more like hiring a contractor or something.”

“Really? And here I was imaging you with your shirt off getting all sweaty.”

“That would hardly fix the hole.”

* * *

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Dorian looked up from the mountain of the Bull’s clothing he had been attempted to sort through on the bed. He wasn’t doing so hot there: at least two piles had fallen onto the floor, and the whole place looked a little like his armoire had puked.

“Attempting to salvage your clothing. You aren’t supposed to just keep it in one pile, you know.” As he spoke another pile slid off the bed and onto the floor. Dorian appeared personally affronted by this display of gravity.

“How’s the working out for you?” the Bull asked.

“Not as well as I would have hoped,” Dorian admitted. “I was hoping to have folded these before you returned.”

From the look of things, Dorian was pretty shit at folding clothing. The Bull didn’t mention that to him.

* * *

He wasn’t too surprised to walk back into his room one day and find that it had grown a chest of drawers.

“Your terrible circus pants are in the middle drawer, your unmentionables are in the top right, and your harnesses and assorted apparatus are in the top left.”

“Unmentionables?” the Bull repeated, because Dorian had been pretty enthusiastic about mouthing his cock through his small clothes last night.

“They are too drab to be worth mentioning,” Dorian sniffed haughtily.

“It’s not like I can fit into your pretty panties,” the Bull pointed out.

Dorian considered that for a moment, his eyes glazing over slightly. “Well,” he said finally. “That’s certainly a picture.”

Later, the Bull got down on his good knee to confirm his suspicions: the bottom drawer was filled with Dorian’s clothes.

* * *

Things just kept piling up from there.

A proper rack for his axe “so I don’t have to worry that it’s going to fall on me in my sleep.” A mirror “since you seem so determined to muss my moustache”. A collapsible bathtub that could extend to be just big enough for him to sit in “to encourage proper hygiene”. A pair of armchairs “do you have the slightest idea how difficult it is to come by a Qunari-sized armchair?”

“It’s impossible,” the Bull told him. “You’ve got to get them custom-ordered.” They weren’t cheap either, and the Bull knew that Dorian actually needed that salary the Inquisition paid him.

“Fortunately, someone else cancelled their order,” Dorian said, lying through his teeth.

The Bull considered calling him on it, but- he wasn’t sure what was going on here, really. If Dorian had been bringing things in for only his own comfort, that would be something to tease him about. If everything was for the Bull, on the other hand, that was a warning sign, a signal that Dorian felt like he owed the Bull some kind of debt. That he was making this a place that was comfortable for both of them was- well. Something else.

The Bull had never lived somewhere like here before. He wasn’t sure what to do.

* * *

And then, one day, the Bull came home to find a trio of workmen filing down the hall and into the tavern- Antivans, as the Bull caught the phrase _querido novio_. The Bull let them pass, and then went up to his room, already pretty sure what he would find.

The hole in the ceiling had been fixed: instead of a hole, it was a window, a glass window, one that he could tell could be opened to let in a breeze. It was currently closed, letting in only the sunlight.

Dorian was there too, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. That was a new state of being for him, the Bull could tell- his shirt had been thrown over the blanket Sera had knitted for them, probably about a minute before the Bull had entered the room. Dorian was pretending to read a book (a gift from Varric) while ignoring him, the only sign that he was aware of the Bull the way his toes were wiggling anxiously in the bearskin rug (another gift, this one from the Inquisitor, who half meant it as a joke).

The Bull decided to humor him, and cleared his throat.

“Oh?” Dorian said, with fake nonchalance. “Are you back?”

“Yeah, kadan,” the Bull replied. “I’m home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Iambic, who prompted me with the word 'paraphernalia'.
> 
> We're going to pretend that this takes place in a universe where Trespasser happened very differently. *handwaves*


	27. Islands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: no man is an island. That doesn't stop the Bull from trying.

The Bull had been dreaming about fire more often, since Dorian had started spending the night in his room more often. It wasn’t something he wanted- not the dreams, and really not the correlation. When morning came and he could think straight, he was able to realize that it wasn’t Dorian, per say, but rather the fact that Dorian was in the habit of stoking the fire before bed, where the Bull would normally let it die down.

That wasn’t much help in the night, when he woke up and though that he’d just got knocked out in the middle of a fire fight in Alam’s street or during a raid in the burning mangroves of the Qetaarnia forest or, that some rebel had managed to make it all the way into Baq Chisaari and started setting the storehouses ablaze. Or when he lay there, heart pounding, picking out constellations through the hole in the roof to remind him that he didn’t exist on Seheron anymore.

It didn’t help either, when Dorian stretched languidly, woken up by the sweat clamming the Bull’s chest or the way he couldn’t quite keep from panting or anything else that wasn’t quite what it should be. Because then, for a minute, he would suddenly remember all the ways he’d thought of to take Dorian out, back when he was just some ‘vint he had to work with and they were going to go back to being enemies as soon as everything was over.

That wasn’t the case any longer, and he didn’t want those thoughts in his head anymore. He wanted them out of his head, so they didn’t surface when the Bull was more likely to look at his kadan and think ‘enemy ‘vint’ instead of ‘Dorian’. He wanted them out of his head, so he could stop fearing a time when he couldn’t get his head on straight fast enough.

“Amatus?” Dorian was clearly trying to make it sound like a whine, but there was too much concern in his tone to really pull it off.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” the Bull replied, carding his fingers through Dorian’s hair. He very carefully kept his fingers well above his neck, just in case.

“Not a bother,” Dorian mumbled.

The Bull continued to stroke through his hair, and Dorian went limp against him. He was pretty sure that he was falling back asleep, but then he spoke up. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Do?”

“Do,” Dorian repeated. “To help your rest.”

Dorian was a smart guy. Smart, tough, and underneath all that flashy self-aggrandizing he really cared, and cared deeply.

If the Bull asked him to, he’d probably stop feed the fire before going to bed. He’d probably come up with some kind of enchantment to keep the room heated and grumble about the hole in the ceiling and guess why fire wasn’t such a good thing for the Bull to dream about. He’d want to ask about it. Maybe he even would ask, and then what?

“Nah,” the Bull said instead. “I can manage.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [tofsla](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/tofsla) who prompted me with the word 'islands'.
> 
> Also: this fic broke 300 kudos. Hooray! \o/ Thank you!


	28. Scratch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: the Bull has claws and Dorian greatly approves... at first.

Breaking with the Qun cut off access to certain resources, Dorian knew. There was the now complete lack of intelligence coming from the Ben-Hassrath about the Venatori’s activities (rumor had it that it was causing the Inquisition’s people in Lydes particular trouble), and at this point he thought that every knew about the horn balm.

As a result, the Bull had no less than seven jars of horn balm in the armoire, and one hidden beneath his bed for ‘special occasions’.

There were other things, though. Less obvious things, and not even the internal conflict the Bull was refusing the vent to anyone. No, no it was much, much better than that.

The Bull’s nail clippers had broken, and now, given the dearth of qunari in Fereldan, that meant that he was having difficulty managing them.

It was- well, he didn’t want to say adorable. Endearing, maybe. Hilarious, certainly.

“You could try growing them out a bit?” he suggested.

The Bull huffed, not looking up from his attempt to file down his nails with some kind of blacksmith’s tool he’d gotten from the undercroft when he went to speak to Dagna. She was working on the problem, which Dorian had to presume meant that by the time she was finish, the Bull would own a pair of self-sharpening nail clippers that were enchanted to slay dragons. Maker only knew when that moment would arrive, however, and if the way the Bull was determinedly sawing away at his nails was any indication, he didn’t expect it to be any time soon.

“It’s not as though they’re going to break, if the effort you’re putting into keeping them under control is any indication,” Dorian argued.

“It’s not the nails I’m worried about,” the Bull replied. “It’s everything else.”

“Oh?” Dorian asked.

The Bull snorted. “Yeah. My nails don’t break, but they can certainly break other things.”

“Sounds promising.” It didn’t, actually, not the way the Bull was saying it, but sometimes it was easier to deal with sex then it was to deal with the Bull’s dancing around his near-pathological fear of harming the people he cared about.

“It’s really not,” the Bull said.

Dorian, with only the slightest of regret over the lack of warmth, got out of bed and knelt between the Bull’s legs. The Bull dropped the file.

“I say it is,” Dorian argued with a smirk, guiding one of the Bull’s hands to his hair. The Bull nodded, though his fingers remained slack, merely resting on his head.

Well, Dorian would soon fix that.

* * *

Dorian frowned down at the sheet, which were now torn beyond any hope of salvage.

“I did warn you,” the Bull said sheepishly.

“You could have at least used the bedposts,” Dorian retorted with a sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [LaviniaD](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LaviniaD/pseuds/LaviniaD) who prompted me with the word 'scratch'.


	29. Exhaustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian and the Bull have a talk, post-Haven.

He hadn’t slept in over a day: it was just now reaching the stage where nothing seemed quite real, everything around him having gone fuzzy around the edges, insubstantial in the face of the heaviness of his limbs.

That was hardly a first for him, however, and he doubted very much that anyone was sleeping, save perhaps the injured, whose numbers dwindled every time they returned with news.

_“Checked to the east: found three survivors.”_

_“Checked to the north: found a squad of Red Templars, and killed them.”_

Every time they returned, the number of dead had ticked upwards.

They still hadn’t found her. Like as not, the Herald was buried under the mountain along with Haven. Still, they searched on.

“How are you holding up there, ‘vint?”

Dorian grunted as the Qunari fell into step beside him, lumbering along easily at a pace that was two steps to every three of Dorian’s. He found himself resent that relative difference in energy expended. “I’m freezing. I should have thought that to be obvious, even with one eye.”

The jab made about as much of an impression as the lack of rest and this damnable cold was, which was to say none whatsoever. “Well, yeah. I meant with all this other stuff.”

“Oh? And which ‘other stuff’ would that be?”

“You know,” Iron Bull said, waving vaguely back in the direction of camp. “The casualties.”

Dorian forced a laugh. “I’m a necromancer, Iron Bull. The dead don’t bother me- they’re my stock and trade.”

“But the dying do,” Iron Bull pointed out.

Dorian snorted. The cold was more bothersome, really: that and the ever-present need to prove himself a good Tevinter, prove that someone from Tevinter could be good. Sadly, that was not an aim that would be aided by finding someplace of relative warmth to curl up when they next returned to camp.

“You never did your own killing before all of this, did you?” the Qunari asked.

Part of him wanted to expound upon the guidelines for ethically sourced bodies, just to see if that might make him squirm, but the need to prove his competence overrode the instinct to annoy.

“I’ve killed before all this, and you’ve seen me fight often enough by now that there should be no cause for concern that I might choke up.”

“Whoa, no one said anything about concerns,” Iron Bull placated, holding his massive hands up in surrender. “Not about your skills, anyway.”

“Really? My mistake, clearly your insinuations that I’m some sort a rank amateur are an expression of respect, I apologize.”

Iron Bull studied him. Dorian let him, preparing answers for the inevitable questions: _It was mostly one-on-one duels, and no, I won’t tell you what the others were. Because it’s private. Because it’s personal. Because I don’t want my father sullying the Inquisition with his shadow. Because I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve driven him to._

“You’re new to fighting as part of a team, aren’t you?” he asked, which was not a question Dorian had prepared for. It threw him a little.

“I’m not sure where you got the notion that teamwork was in vogue in Tevinter,” he remarked.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have no experience with it,” Iron Bull pointed out.

“How dare you,” Dorian intoned in mock outrage. “I’m on the very cutting edge of fashion, miles ahead of my peers.”

It was only after the words were out of his mouth that he realized that they were an admission that Iron Bull was correct.

“I’ll try to remember that,” he said, sounding amused.

“See that you do,” Dorian snapped.

They did the rest of their scouting mission in silence. When they returned, the sun had fallen again, and there was still no sign of Lavellan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [Alphabetiful](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphabetiful) who prompted me with the word 'exhaustion'.


	30. Meet the Inquisitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: I fill out another meme from ye olde tumblr.

       **What color best represents them?**

Seafoam green. Both her eyes and her vallaslin are this color: she picked out special dye to make it that way, because she was a vain young woman. The vanity is absolutely in the past tense, that’s her story and she’s sticking to it.

       **If they were an animal, which would they be?**

Wolf. I almost don’t want to say it, but wolf: very strong pack mentality, very stubborn independent streak (relative to domesticated canines, at least), and vicious when pressed.

       **Which music genre would best describe your Inquisitor?**

Whatever genre of music you would call Thomas Bergersen’s [Starvation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZz9m7o_uTQ), which is Bulgarian folk singing set to a bombastic orchestra.

       **What season reflects their personality best?**

       **If your Inquisitor was a force of nature, what kind would they be? (hurricane, earthquake, etc.)**

Ironically, considering the events of In Your Heart Shall Burn, she’s an avalanche: a lot of old, seemingly-settled debris bearing down suddenly and with great force.

       **What’s their alignment? (chaotic good, neutral evil, etc.)**

Neutral good. Traditions and laws are there for a reason, but sometimes those reasons suck.

       **Which element best describes them?**

       **What scent would they be associated with, if any?**

Wood smoke and petrichor.

       **Do they have a background story?**

*looks at the sadly neglected Vir Adahlen* *laughs for ten million years* OH BOY IS THERE BACKSTORY.

Highlights:

  *          She’s forty-five at the start of Inquisition, fifty by Trespasser. She’s a widow, she’s got two kids, a father who dies during Inquisition shortly before the Winter Palace, and a brother, who’s the Clan’s first.
  *          She started lobbying for her vallaslin at fifteen, and got it at sixteen, mostly because she ran off for a week and returned with a bunch of great bear parts to prove that she was totally an adult, and the Keeper just threw his hands up and went “let’s not find out what she does to prove her maturity next”.
  *          She was married at eighteen, and had her kids at nineteen. It was a difficult pregnancy, and a more difficult birth, and as a result she can’t have any more kids, even if she weren’t pushing fifty.
  *          She was named Clan Lavellan’s War Leader during the Blight. As Lavellan sent the most hunters, she was sort of the de facto hahren for the Dalish hunters during the Battle of Denerim, and was placed in charge of the defense of the alienage.
  *          SO MANY PEOPLE DIED IN THE BLIGHT. Her husband was one of the fifty hunters they sent to Fereldan. He wasn’t one of the eight who came back. By the time she got back to her clan, the influx of Fereldan refugees and resulting strain on Marcher resources had caused an uptick in banditry/violence against elves, so about half the people who stayed behind were dead too, including: her mother, her sisters, her sister-in-law, her nephews, and the Keeper. It was a mess, and no one’s quite recovered from it.
  *          Pretty much the only way they have recovered from it is numerically, because they absorbed the survivors of a harder-hit clan into Clan Lavellan, and took in a fair few city elves besides. As of the start of Inquisition, the clan has somewhere between 275-300 members. Pre-Blight, the clan numbered somewhere around 350.
  *          The Inquisition knows her as Ghilan’amin Lavellan, which is actually her rank and clan affiliation, because she kind of panicked a bit when she woke up after the Conclave. Her actual name is Dalal Dubois.
  *          Incidentally, in any timeline where Mahanon is Inquisitor, Dalal died with her husband during the Blight. Her brother stuck around just long enough to ensure that her kids got their vallaslin, and then pulled a Mom Mahariel and walked off into the woods never to be heard from again, which bumped Mahanon up to the position of First.



       **Do they have any family?**

*takes a deep breath* *laughs for another ten million years*

  *          Her father is Milo Dubois. He was born in Halamshiral, and was a fairly successful actor for a time there, until a production he was starring in caused a riot. He joined Clan Lavellan from there, and married her mother, who was a hunter.
  *          Twins run in her family, as does magic. She is a twin (her twin brother is Amijai, Clan Lavellan’s First), her now-deceased younger sisters were twins, and she gave birth to twins.
  *          Her daughter, Edrei, is a mage, and quite rude and hotheaded. Sera kind of reminds her of Edrei. Her son, Nehurai, is not very good with people, but can talk to halla, and Cole reminds her of him.
  *          A lot of people blame her brother and his lack of decisive leadership skills in the face of multiple personal and clan-wide crises happening at once for how bad things got during the Blight. They feel like the only reason he’s still the First is because if anything like that should happen again, she’ll be able to handle it for him. She feels like she should get some kind of commendation for how she’s never punched anyone over that.
  *          She also kind of feels like she was a shit mother to her kids once she got back from the Blight. It’s not true, but it’s rooted in the fact that there were eight million other things directly related to the survival of the clan that she had to deal with on top of her kids, so she wasn’t spending much time with them. It’s part of the reason why she moms so hard nowadays: she’s making up for lost time.
  *          Mahanon is related to her. Specifically, he’s her late husband’s sister’s wife’s cousin’s son. They generally just stick to nephew and aunt. In timelines where she’s Inquisitor, he’s the clan’s Second.



       **Are they better with children, animals, or neither?**

Children. She’s good with animals, but she _loves_ kids.

       **What’s the Inquisitor’s favorite food?**

Acorn bread.

       **Can they cook?**

She can skin a bear, butcher a ram, and partake in group food-making processes like that for creating pemmican. Don’t expect anything fancier than that.

       **Do they have any hobbies?**

As Inquisitor? Writing letters she never intends to send: mostly personal stuff she would actually like to speak to her kids about face-to-face instead of via letter, and testing out ways to prepare Deshanna for Solas. There are also, among others, three very passive-aggressive letters to House Pavus expounding upon how wonderful their son is, and one letter, more strikethroughs than anything else, to the Bull’s tama, attempting to reassure her that the Bull has a very important place with the members of the Inquisition.

       **Are they very fashion-conscious or more practical?**

Practical. Fashion confuses her, when it comes to situations where it’s needed she leans pretty heavily on her advisors and Vivienne.

       **Are they neat or unorganized?**

Neat, but as the way the Dalish group things is slightly different than how humans group things (by function rather than by item, so, for example, every stack of paperwork is partnered with its own quill and inkwell, instead of the quills all being in one spot, the inkwells in their own spot and the paperwork all in one spot) it doesn’t always appear that way.

       **Who do you think they’ll get along with best among their companions, if any?**

  *          She suspects that Solas hasn’t actually talked with a person for a long time before Inquisition, which makes her overlook a few glaring personality flaws. She also is really, really intrigued by his method of experiencing history- as far as she’s concerned, that has so many applications when it comes to reclaiming their past, and if it’s something that could be taught it could change so much about how the Dalish operate.
  *          She was pretty wary of Dorian initially, but as he proved willing to learn from his mistakes she warmed to him. And then realized that he was pretty close in age to her children, who she gave birth to. And then they got to “your father tried to fucking what”, so now as far as she’s concerned Dorian’s got a place in her family, should he ever feel the need to claim it.
  *          She tried talking to Blackwall about the Blight shortly after he first joined up, but Blackwall was all awkward about it, as he was torn between “holy shit, you fought in the Blight, tell me everything” and “oh fuck, you fought in the Blight, you know everything”. They’re kind of politely awkward to one another now, what with the whole Rainier thing.
  *          She’s see a lot of herself in the Iron Bull, especially in the way he interacts with his boys (one of the main reasons why she ordered the retreat instead of upholding the potential alliance with the Qun: she’s not going to make someone watch their kids die). She also originally thought he was, like, in his mid-fifties, when he’s actually not even forty yet, which sent her into a “this is an Inquisition of _babies_ D:” spiral.
  *          Vivienne kind of amusingly horrifies/horrifyingly amuses her, because her father always told her all these stories about how humans behaved and she mostly chalked it up to exaggeration, as none of the humans she interacted with in the Marches acted like that. But no, it’s all true, Vivienne’s proof of that (and proof that it can even work, on occasion).
  *          There are shades of that with Leliana, but Leliana’s methods of working the Court are more focused upon observation and swift action, which makes a lot more sense to her than Vivienne’s pomp and circumstance.
  *          Josephine is a gift from the Creators, thank Mythal and Elgar’nan that there’s someone who can explain human politics to her, they would all be lost without Josephine, Blackwall doesn’t deserve her favor to be quite honest, but hey, if he’s what makes her happy…
  *          She’s not entirely sure what to make of Cullen: she tends to disagree with his views on mages and their dangers, and she’s heard enough about Kirkwall to be highly suspicious, but she respects his decision to break with the Order (and the lyrium) and also, he’s another member of the Inquisition who is a near-literal child in her eyes.
  *          Cole is her son, and probably the only person in the Inquisition who would be entirely happy to learn that they’ve been adopted by her.
  *          She and Cassandra were initially at odds, but they grew to respect the hell out of each other, and then, once she was named Inquisitor, they got to know one another well enough to consider themselves friends.
  *          Sera confused her initially, and they are forever butting heads over how elfy the Inquisitor is. But she reminds Dalal of her daughter, and honestly she just finds how hard and fast Sera runs from being an elf to be kind of tragic rather than a personal attack, so they got to the cookie scene, at least.
  *          She and Varric aren’t especially close, but they like one another. They go out for ale and gab a bit on occasion, and she appreciates that he tries to include her in things like Wicked Grace nights.



       **Who will they romance, if anyone?**

Unfortunately, Solas.

       **Do they have any scars? What are they from?**

Visible in game? She has one on her cheek from the Blight: one of Shianni’s arrows grazed her face while it was in the process of shooting a genlock off her back, it was awesome.

**If they met, how would your Inquisitor get along with your Warden? Your Hawke?**

She’s met them both, actually!

  *          She met the Warden three times during the events of Origins. Once as part of the Dalish party encountered at random after the Warden recruited them, and then again during the Battle of Denerim, when she was placed in charge of the defense of the alienage. They also met, very briefly, after the battle was over, during the celebration. She was very impressed with Warden Tabris.
  *          She met Hawke during Inquisition. They got along just fine, but that’s really the most that could be said about it.



       **What’s your Inquisitor’s opinion on each of the various races, if any?**

  *          Elves are clearly superior beings. She says this, mostly joking, and only out of earshot of Sera and before learning about Fen’Harel’s plans.
  *          She doesn’t think much of the Qun- sure, they treat elves as equals, but not without stifling their personalities and separating them completely from their culture. So, capital Q-Qunari tend to get treated at a suspicious arms-length. Lower case-q qunari are a different story. Tal-Vashoth/Vashoth communities have started cropping up in the Marches recently, especially after the Arishok was stranded in Kirkwall, and she tends to prefer dealing with those settlements over human settlements when it comes to trading and such. Even after breaking with the Qun, most Qunari don’t suddenly obtain the same prejudices as most of the rest of Thedas.
  *          Dwarves have honestly mostly struck her as being shorter, hairier humans. It’s only after becoming Inquisitor that she begins to appreciate the differences, and learn about the culture of Orzammar.
  *          Humans are best taken sparingly and in small doses, and large groups of humans tend to be troublesome, though there are several individual humans who she likes just fine. Later, she amends this view slightly: humans are best faced down in the company of other, more trusted humans.




	31. Magister, Please

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magister Pavus once offered the Magisterium his silence at the price of eight thousand gold a month. 
> 
> In hindsight, that was a bargain and they should have accepted it.

“Oh for Andraste’s sake, I’ll fight the bloody dragon!”

The roar that greeted Magister Pavus’ proclamation probably put the call of the beast currently ravaging the Hundred Pillars to shame.

“You?” Magister Ahriman demanded.

“I’m sorry, am I speaking too quickly for you?” Magister Pavus retorted. “I. Will. Fight. The. Bloody. Dragon.”

“What qualifications do you think you have?” called out Magister Porenni.

“Well, unless I’m very much mistaken, I’ve killed three more dragons than any of the rest of you. Four if you count that summoned avatar of an Avvar god that was stuck in a time loop in the Frostbacks.”

It said something about the state of her Senate floor these days that her secretary didn’t hesitate to write “I, Dorian Pavus, once killed a god in the form of a dragon on a mountaintop.”

Granted, her secretary was using his exact words transcribed in shorthand, but they all knew what sort of effect those words would have once these transcripts were published.

“And what resources would you require for this endeavor?” she asked before the Magisterium could properly erupt again. The Magisters were an unruly lot, but at least they remembered not to speak over the President of their body of legislature.

“None whatsoever,” he declared. “I thought I’d just take three of my closest associates on a jaunt to the Hundred Pillars, kill it with their assistance, and return within the month.”

A resounding silence greeted this declaration. Minerva could have sworn that she felt the shift in the room as the implications set in.

“I have no further objections,” Magister Porenni said.

“Nor I,” Magister Ahriman concurred.

There were no other points raised, so she called a vote.

“All in favor of sending Magister Pavus to deal with the dragon problem?”

Most of the Magisterium was, including, surprisingly, Magister Tilani. Magister Pavus, blessedly, recused himself from the Magisterium after the vote to make preparations for the excursion. It wasn’t as though they got anything done without him there, of course, but at least Minerva only had to issue two warnings against dueling on the floor as opposed to her usual six.

* * *

Magister Pavus left the following day in the company of his liberati apprentice, an elf-blooded mercenary, and that overly-cheerful dwarven arcanist. If nothing else, Minerva was looking forward to several weeks of lessened noise and turmoil.

So, naturally, he returned with his companions five days later on the smelly, reanimated corpse of the dragon, and deposited it squarely on the Senate steps. This necessitated her calling an emergency quorum session to attend before the sun had even considered rising.

“I killed the dragon,” Magister Pavus reported.

“I can both see and smell that,” she snapped. “What do you propose we do with it?”

Magister Pavus proposed that the meat be combed over for those rare ingredients that the Alchemical Corp might desire for their work, the scales be sent to an armorers to make some kind of ceremonial armor, and the skeleton be donated to the Arcanist Hall as an exhibit, save for one tooth, which Magister Pavus intended to keep as a fee.

“And what do you intend to do with the tooth?” she asked.

“Madam President,” Magister Pavus said gravely, an almost solemn expression on his face. She already regretted her question. “I intend to split the tooth in two, set the larger half in some violently pink dawnstone alloy, and present it to my illicit Qunari lover as a symbol of my devotion to him.”

There was another resounding silence, save for the scratch of the secretary’s quill as she added his words to the Magisterium’s official records.

Minerva had not yet had enough tea to deal with this. There would never been enough tea to deal with this.

“I trust there are no objections, at this truly heinous hour of the day, that would forestall the removal of this creature from our doorstep?” she asked.

Thankfully she was correct.


	32. Doctor Pavus, I Presume?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inquisition: Skyhold Nine staring Dorian Pavus as the hot stuff, wet-behind-the-ears doctor and the Bull as the simple chef, no spying here.

“Oi, Chef! Guess what?”

“I’m busy,” the Bull hollered back. “Unless you want to become Krem brûlée…”

“You heard him. Come back when the chef’s not using a blowtorch, altus.”

Oh. Dorian wanted to speak with him. That was something else entirely.

Judging by the muffled hissing words he couldn’t quite make out on the other side of the door, something was not good.

The Bull switched off the blowtorch, and was disengaging it from the fuel line when Dorian entered the kitchen. Dorian stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the blowtorch, giving the Bull a good opportunity to study him.

Dorian looked frazzled. Not ‘I’ve been working double shifts in the health center and then spending all my free time researching’ frazzled, either: he was fraying around the edges a little. For a guy who valued his image and his self-control as highly as Dorian did, it said a lot, and what it said was not good.

“Are you actually cooking with that?” Dorian demanded.

“I’m caramelizing with it,” the Bull replied.

“That’s barbaric!”

The Bull snorted. For someone who’d been so gun-ho about working on the frontiers of civilization, he was so _squeamish_ about things that weren’t synthesized. You could take the ‘vint out of Tevinter…

“Well, you don’t have to eat it,” the Bull, tipping his horns over to the far wall. “Replicator’s right over there if you want a taste of home.”

Dorian laughed, a short bitter sound, and stepped fully into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind him. “I’ve had more of home than I can stomach already.”

“Things not going well with Giselle bringing your folks in from the demilitarized zone?” the Bull asked.

It was an opening: normally Dorian would be swift to correct him, that the Tevinter Imperium wasn’t in the demilitarized zone, no, not even his home planet of Qarinus. It said a lot, how he hadn’t said a damn thing since he arrived.

“Hey, kadan,” the Bull said, and Dorian stopped avoiding his gaze. “What’s eating you?”

“What isn’t eating me?” Dorian asked.

“Well, I’m not,” the Bull pointed out. “I mean, we could rectify that, but-”

“We’re in your kitchen and that would be highly unsanitary,” Dorian finished with a strained imitation of his normal bluster. He sighed, and dropped the act a little. “I suppose my two main problems are my parents and my commission with Starfleet. On account of the former I find myself in need of resigning the latter.”

The Bull felt his stomach drop into the next deck down. “What?” Dorian’s Inquisition Starfleet commission was a source of extreme pride, and Dorian’s identity as an Inquisition man was about as solid as you could get. “Why?”

“You know, of course, of the Tevinter Imperium’s reputation of using genetic enhancement as a panacea?”

That was probably the most rhetorical question the Bull had ever been asked. For one thing, everyone knew about Tevinter’s use of genetic enhancement. It was kind of their thing: for all that the Tevinter Imperium was largely populated with and controlled by humans, they weren’t members of the Inquisition, and that was why. When the Eugenic Wars ended and Andraste had defeated the Augments, the surviving ‘supermen’ had packed themselves onto sleeper ships and shot themselves towards a nearby habitable planet. They’d overshot, actually, and ended up in a cluster of worlds that bordered what was now Qunari territory, Seheron, and the demilitarized zone.

For another thing, the Qunari Union and the Tevinter Imperium had been in a state of war for longer than the Inquisition had known about the Qunari, and the Bull was Ben-Hassrath. Had been Ben-Hassrath. Still had a piece of obsidian carved in the shape of a dragon’s tooth in his quarters and everything.

“You know I do,” the Bull replied. The distance between Tevinter space and Seheron was so short that you could take a shuttle from Seheron to Qarinus. The Bull had done it before: just because humans ran the Imperium didn’t been that they wouldn’t contract other races into bonded employment in place of accepting refugees. Posing as one of those was a good way to get spies in over the border. Qarinus had been full of beautiful architecture and exquisite dancing, and under that it had stunk of misery and decay. He’d been happy when that mission was over. “I also know that you don’t practice it.”

“Yes, well,” Dorian shifted uncomfortably. “I do not. Never have and never will. My parents, on the other hand…”

He trailed off.

“What, did your parents start discussing genome splicing in front of Giselle, or something?” the Bull asked.

Dorian laughed, and this time it had an edge of hysteria to it. “Something like that. It’s- you know what Tevinter is like. Everything is about distilling the next generation to create the perfect mind, the perfect body. As an Altus, you must _be_ that perfection and come by it naturally: no invasive genetic modifications were required to create me, and my hypothetical children would have been bred from a woman of similar qualifications.”

There was a but coming. The Bull waited for it.

“There are always anomalies, of course: the socially accepted thing to do is dispose of them quietly, but that doesn’t always work out. Felix was one: did you know, when his grandfather found out that he was likely to develop xenopolycythemia he attempted to have him assassinated?”

“No, I didn’t know,” the Bull replied when Dorian failed to continue.

“He was lucky. His parents loved him.” Dorian took a deep breath. “I suppose, in a way, I’m lucky as well. My parents can’t stand one another. If they could have brought themselves to conceive another child to be their heir…”

“Dorian,” the Bull said, reaching out. Dorian let himself be pulled in for a hug, hiding his face against the Bull’s apron.

He had some idea of where this was going. He was just waiting for Dorian to get it off his chest.

“I was always too much- I was always getting into fights when I was younger, always speaking out of turn,” Dorian explained, muffling his voice with the Bull’s chest. “Poor impulse control, they said, too much aggression. It was enough to bring down infamy upon myself, but not enough to be considered defective. That came later, when I stopped pretending to give a damn and started drinking my way though the brothels in the alienage. That sort of behavior was indicative of illnesses with a genetic basis: several of them, by the standards of the Imperium.”

Dorian shifted uneasily, and the Bull let his arms slacken, just in case he wanted to pull away. Dorian did, straightening his clothes with fake casualness.

“Let’s see: there’s alcoholism, pointing to a predisposition towards addictions in general, and my lack of participation in society could point to any number of antisocial or personality disorders. It might even be a form of sociopathy! And let’s not forget the homosexuality! Such a quaint term, for something blown so far out of proportion to its importance.”

He huffed, and crossed his arms, studiously looking anywhere but the Bull. “Please, just ask,” he said finally.

“Did your parents-” was as far as Bull got before Dorian’s reply tumbled out of his mouth.

“Change me?” Dorian asked. “Yes. They did.”

The Bull had been expecting to hear of an attempt, not a success. He gaped. “How?”

“Genetic modification, weren’t you listening?” Dorian snapped.

“I mean- Dorian. I’ve seen you drink at Varric’s. You spent the first year you were stationed here trying to pick a fight with me. And Blackwall. And Solas, and-”

Dorian rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t fall out of his head. “Yes, yes, I take your point.”

The Bull risked reaching out, cupping Dorian’s face with his hand. “You’re not going to tell me this is faked, are you?”

“No!” Dorian reached up with both hands and clamped down on the Bull’s wrists, keeping him there. “No, of course not. Never think that.”

He might have thought it, once, when he thought it might get him back into the Qun’s good graces- when he thought he wanted to be in the Qun’s good graces. But when it was time to either burn his bridges or burn his boys, well-

Lavellan had helped him make the right choice. And that meant that he could have this- this something with Dorian, without having to wonder if he was going to have to put a knife through his back later.

“They started small, something unlikely to turn me into a drooling vegetable if they got it wrong: the alcohol. It removed whatever predisposition I might have possessed to drive me to drink, raised my tolerance to make it all but impossible to become drunk, and altered how I taste it. I can still drink. I can still get drunk, even, if I work at it. It’s just decidedly unpleasant. I was- not particularly accommodating, as you might well imagine. I think that’s why the next thing they changed were the way I produce hormones that regulate aggression levels, to make me more docile. It- I’m not sure it worked. They definitely did something, but I don’t know if really had a lasting effect. It’s hard to tell, you see, if I’m acting differently because of the changes they made to my genetic sequence, or because of the resulting emotional turmoil, or because it’s been ten years and people change in that amount of time, or-”

He broke off, his grip on the Bull’s wrist tightening briefly, before he pulled the Bull’s hand from his face. The Bull let him, watching Dorian look down at their conjoined hands.

“They did it at home, on the estate, to avoid gossip. I’d been closely watched the whole time, but after they began that round of genetic tinkering security started become a little slack. I’d dearly love to say that I was playing along, but I think I may have been in shock, truth be told. They took that behavior as a sign that things were working, and then one day, quite out of the blue, I realized that I was walking around outside without any escorts. They’d fallen behind or taken a wrong turn somewhere, and right ahead of me was the security gate. There was a trick I used to pull, when I was younger and things were less dire: if you throw something at the wall, an alarm will sound, and the security guard will leave his post to check on it. I picked the lock on my restraining cuff, and used that. It worked like a charm. I left, pawned everything of value I had on me, and scraped together enough latinum to get myself smuggled offworld and into Inquisition space. I presented myself at the nearest immigration office and requested asylum. I used being a homosexual as grounds for my case. I didn’t mention what my parents did. I lied about it, actually. It’s a standard question for incoming citizens of the Imperium, repeatedly so if you intend to permanently leave. ‘Have you been subject to any genetic enhancements?’ I must have been asked that about three dozen times, and I always told them no. If I’d told the truth, I would never have been allowed to practice medicine, let alone join Starfleet, let alone serve here. And now…”

“What happened, exactly?” the Bull asked, as gently as he could.

“They came up to that bloody simulacrum and thought it was me. We’d had an argument before. I was still walking around the Promenade, trying to clear my head, but they thought I’d be in the health center, and the simulacrum was there, and Giselle thought that it would be a wonderful opportunity to test how it reacted to unexpected interactions, and- they just started talking to it. They promised they wouldn’t tell anyone, even said that they were proud of the career I’d built for myself, that they wanted to know if I could forgive them, but even if I couldn’t, they were grateful for the chance to hear my voice again. It was all very touching, apparently.”

“Was Giselle the only one to hear them say that?” the Bull asked.

“No. Sera was there are well. She’s the one who broke the news to me, as it happened,” Dorian smiled bitterly, and let their hands drop. “I think she was hoping I’d be able to tell her that it was all some kind of misunderstanding.”

“Now what?” the Bull asked.

“Now I explain my position to Ghilan’amin Lavellan, and resign my commission before I am cashiered from service.” Dorian let the Bull’s hand drop.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“No. No, of course it’s not.” Dorian attempted to make the words snap, but his heart wasn’t in it. “This has already driven me from one home, I’d rather it didn’t-” He cut himself off with a frustrated growl.

“So don’t resign. Fight it.”

“Now? When the Venatori are growing ever more powerful in the Imperium? When they’re bringing more and more Maquis circles under their thumb? When they’ve already gotten the Archon to sign that damnable non-aggression pact?” Dorian snorted. “No, it’s- it’s better that I simply leave. A shame, really. I would have liked to deny everyone the satisfaction of pretending that no Tevinter ever stood against Corypheus’ Dominion.” He attempted a smile. It wasn’t his best work. “I don’t suppose this gets any easier?”

There were a lot of things the Bull could have said to that.

‘You’ve done this before.’ But it was obvious that it was different this time. Whether because he wasn’t fleeing for his life, or because he couldn’t console himself with going somewhere better, this was different.

‘It does.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie, but there were days where it certainly didn’t feel true. Those days just got fewer and farther apart, the longer he stayed here on Skyhold.

‘Is that why you started this? We’re you studying up on how to be an exile for when you got caught out?’ He would never say that now. He might have, as Hissrad: the ensuing argument would lead to a break-up, and with Dorian no longer a potential source of information, that was the desirable outcome.

“It’s easier when you have people,” he told him. “I don’t know if I could do this without my boys. Or you.”

Those last two words just kind of slipped out. Dorian looked gutted.

“I don’t want to go,” he said falteringly.

“So don’t. So stay,” the Bull argued. “If you have to resign, then you have to resign, but you don’t have to go.”

“I- what is it you think I would do, without my commission? Become one of your Chargers, perhaps?”

“You’d look pretty good in the uniform.”

“I categorically refuse to participate in No-Pants Fridays.”

“Eh. It’s not like you have to go around on Fridays half-naked. You liked that skirt in the dress uniform well enough.”

“For the last time, it’s not a skirt, it’s a robe!” Dorian smiled in fond exasperation at the familiar argument. It even reached his eyes for a moment.

“There are plenty of people in the Dales that need doctoring, especially on Seheron,” the Bull pointed out.

“From a ‘vint?” Dorian asked.

“It’s worked out pretty well so far.”

“It’s a bit different, when I’ve got the uniform to hide behind.”

“You’ve built up a reputation. People trust you. You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”

“What I want is impossible.” Dorian snorted bitterly. “I think being able to leave the station with some of my dignity intact is the best I can hope for.”

“Dorian, there’s got to be another way. Your medical degree doesn’t go away with your commission, does it?”

“Not immediately, no, though my medical _license_ does,” Dorian explained. “And if I attempted to re-up my medical license anywhere else, a background check would almost certainly expose the truth, which would strip me of my medical degrees- those earned in Inquisition territory, at least. I suppose my Imperium doctorates would remain valid, but it’s unlikely that anyone would accept those. And even if they did, with the political climate being as it is, I would have to physically return the Imperium to retrieve them.” He shook his head, and looked away from the Bull. “I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t suspect that’s the outcome my parents wanted.”

“You think they did it on purpose?” the Bull asked. It didn’t seem likely to him. If they’d gone through all that trouble to keep things under wraps in the Imperium, where it was all legal, they probably wouldn’t want it to come out somewhere they could get in trouble for it.

“I don’t know,” Dorian said. “I just know that- that you deserve to know why I’m leaving.”

“ _Dorian_.” The Bull reached for him.

“Katoh,” Dorian said.

The Bull froze.

“I always knew this could happen. Now it has.” Dorian forced himself to look at the Bull again with visible effort. “Goodbye, Bull.”

He left. The Bull gave it until the count of ten before thumbing his comm.

“Sera.”

“What, Bull? Did one of your fancy gadgets break again? I keep telling you not to buy dawnstone.”

“I just talked to Dorian. He’s going to resign his commission and leave the station.”

“Shite,” Sera spat.

“My thoughts exactly. How soon can you get here? I wasn’t able to talk any sense into him, but maybe I’ll have more like with his folks.”

“You know where they live?”

The Bull eyed the computer terminal. Information like where guests lived was normally protected behind a firewall, but-

“Is Dagna still using the tri-alternating stream cipher?” he asked. “Because then I can find out in about ten seconds.”

Sera snorted. “Don’t bother. Command-staff, remember? They’re in the habit ring, H8- Delta-9. Meet me there. Hang on. Should grab a phaser first. Or maybe a bow and arrow. Yeah, that’s funny- ‘coz Dorian and I shoot arrows at Varric’s, yeah? See you then.”

The comm cut out.

“Krem,” the Bull hollered. “Can you handle clean up in here?”

“What the fuck happened, chef?”

“Krem, can you clean up, yes or no?”

Krem sighed. “Yes, I can, but I’d like some warning if someone going to try to shoot up the place again.”

“Don’t worry,” the Bull said. “All the shooting will be taking place on the habitat ring, if it comes to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Way back in December, someone mentioned fusion AUs: for example a coffee shop AU IN SPACE. 
> 
> "Isn't that Deep Space Nine?" someone said. "Dorian/Bull as Bashir/Garak?" said someone else. "Oh God, I just remembered: genetic modification." 
> 
> So, I started writing this, and honestly, the worldbuilding got very intense and I'm trying, very hard, to finish up some of the literal score of WIPs I have floating around, so it got put on the backburner. 
> 
> I feel like this part stands well on its own, and God only knows when I'll be able to get back to it. So, enjoy!


	33. On Reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dorian returns for the Exalted Council.

The last leg of travel before he reached the Winter Palace was sunny and mild, a contrast the pervading fog and drizzle that had been his constant companion since he’d made landfall three days ago. In its own rustic way, the southern portion of Orlais was positively Fereldan, he mused. It was a witticism he intended to hold in reserve, in case there was a need to send the Orlesians and Fereldans squabbling with one another.

It wasn’t anyone of either nationality which he saw first after depositing his horse at the stable. It was a Qunari- or rather, a Tal-Vashoth.

Dorian gave himself a moment to reacquaint himself with the Bull’s features: not that he hadn’t recalled them frequently while he’d been away, but they’d dulled in his memory, like a relief which had had fingers rubbed over it too often and was starting to wear smooth.

That was the moment he realized that he was alone in his restraint.

“Bull,” was all that he managed to get out before being swept up off his feet and crushed against his chest.

He’d forgotten how strong the Bull was, how broad, how unbearably gentle. And Maker, he’d somehow managed to forget the stench of him.  

Dorian inhaled deeply before resuming his protest. “Bull, put me down!”

Bull gave him one final rip-creaking squeeze before lowering him back down to the floor. “Aw, I missed you too, kadan.”

“I’ve missed being here, certainly,” Dorian said, with a sniff he meant to be haughty.

The corner of the Bull’s eye crinkled more deeply than he recalled. He stood on tiptoe to touch it, and then-

Well. He’d come a long way, and the pleasure of being kissed like this made the journey worth it.

* * *

He saw Sera next.

Or rather, he saw the Chargers next, but they were so inexorably intertwined with the Bull that it barely rated mention. Of course he saw the Chargers, he’d seen the Bull.

It did not so naturally follow that Sera drop from the balcony onto his back when the Bull got up to help the serving girl with everyone’s food, but in hindsight he probably shouldn’t have been surprised either.

“ _Fasta vass_!” Dorian shouted, as there was a general scrambling to stop tankards from tumbling over one another.

“You got fat!” Sera hollered back, directly in his ear.

“Luckily for you,” Dorian retorted. “If you’d tried that on Skinner or Dalish you’d be a pile of splinters.”

Skinner slurred something about how she’d also be bleeding, and Sera stole his tankard away.

“What?” she demanded at Dorian’s look. “Do you want a proper introduction?”

“I would never insult Lady Mai Bhalsych Of Korse with the implication that I did not remember her,” Dorian told her, and stole his tankard back. “Speaking of, I hear Lady Bhalsych has taken a dwarven lover. The shock! The scandal!”

Sera snorted, and stole Grimm’s instead. “Things with Dagna are the tits, since you asked. The queen bee’s tit.”

“I wasn’t aware that bees had tits, but you’re the apiologist.”

“And you’re the tree and custard-ist,” Sera said, raising her glass.

“That’s me!” Dorian agreed, and clinked their tankards together.

* * *

“You should go see Her Elfiness before you and the Bull go off and splat,” Sera advised as Dagna tried to guide her out of the chair without landing her on the floor. “She’s been mopey.”

Both women had waved off offers of help, and the Bull had to see Krem and Grimm off, so had taken her advice and gone in search of the Inquisitor, following Sera’s half-coherent directions and vague waving motions to a guard that would point him at her.

That lead him to a balcony, upon which was a Dalish woman: he could see her vallaslin in her profile, and her white hair, and the pinched expression on her face.

At first Dorian thought _Is this part of some prank of Sera’s?_ And then he thought _This must be Lavellan’s Keeper, or some other member of her Clan, perhaps I have intruded upon a meeting._

And then she turned to face him fully, her face splitting into a wide familiar grin. “Dorian!”

He could not have hidden his surprise from her if he’d wanted to. “Inquisitor! What happened to you?”

She laughed. “You know how I’ve been saying that I’m almost fifty? Well, it happened. I am officially fifty years old, and have decided to leave the beet juice and sorrel to others.”

It wasn’t just that she was no longer dyeing her hair, though that probably played the larger part in why he didn’t recognize her. She looked care-worn and weary in a way she hadn’t looked even when they were making the long torturous trawl from the smoldering ruins of Haven to Skyhold. There was something pinches about her face, which had more lines upon it- and they weren’t laugh lines, like the Bull had.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m just old, that’s all,” she told him. She took his hand in hers: her skin felt brittle, like parchment. “And you look well,” she deflected, staring him down in that singularly uncomfortable way she had of doing. “Enjoying that fine northern sun?”

Dorian, with reluctance, let the matter drop for now. “Up until I was forced to enjoy the fine northern monsoons. They’ve been particularly violent this past season- there was one shortly before I left that took out three major bridges in Qarinus.”

“Sounds serious,” Lavellan commented.

“Oh, it is. But it doesn’t terribly inconvenience anyone of import, so I rather expect that when business concludes here they’ll still be arguing over who gets to embezzle the funds for their repair.”

“Is that why you’ve left again?”

“Hardly.” He bowed. “Ambassador Dorian Pavus of the Tevinter Imperium, at your service.”

“Ha!” Lavellan said. “It was good of them to send someone on whom I can rely.”

“In all honesty, I rather got the impression that people were not lining up for the position,” Dorian admitted. “Still, it worked out well this way. I’m happy to be back, where I can be of some use.”

“And I’m happy to have you back,” Lavellan replied. “I’m happy to see you again.”

There was something off about that, something wrong about all of that. But there were Qunari and Eluvians and worse laid out ahead of them, and Dorian thought that he would have time to pick at her words later.

Later, as it happened, did not come as it ought.


	34. Tying the Knot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: yes, it's exactly what you're thinking, and everyone involved was very surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I like writing about Qunari with weird dicks. This is who I am.

The thing was, there wasn't really anything different about that time. It wasn't shortly after he'd turned Tal-Vashoth, it wasn't around the time he'd started calling Dorian kadan, or Dorian had started calling him amatus. They'd been wearing their dragon tooth necklaces for years: they were in love and they knew it.   
  
He'd noticed a different feeling- a different tightness around the base of his cock, a different stretch to Dorian around him. But it didn't feel wrong. It felt great.  
  
It made Dorian feel great too. He came, screaming, his nails raking across the Bull's shoulders, one of his heels thumping against his back. It would leave marks- the Bull kind of liked that.   
  
Actually, the Bull _really_ liked that. Normally he could fuck Dorian through at least two orgasms, but Dorian was still panting his way through the aftershocks of the first one when he came.   
  
And came. And came.   
  
It was intense. Powerful. Frightening, because he had no idea what was happening, he just had to fist the sheets and try his best to keep from digging his claws into Dorian's hips.   
  
Dorian was the only thing keeping the fear from overwhelming him. He ran his fingertips gently over the Bull's face and encouraged him to look at him. The smile he wore was the sort of soft, tender thing he would probably deny being able to make later. The Bull latched on to that, and it saw him through.   
  
When it was over he still felt shaky and coltish, and a little bit of shifting confirmed it: they were stuck together. Tied.   
  
"Well," Dorian said, with a small, incredulous laugh. "And here I was beginning to think that was just propaganda."  
  
At least that meant he didn't need to explain what was happening. That just left the other thing.   
  
“This has never happened to me before,” he said in a rush.   
  
“What, _never_?” Dorian asked.   
  
“Nope,” the Bull confirmed. “The tamassrans said that happened sometimes. Like being born with no horns or extra toes or shit.” They’d checked him out, and found that he could fuck well enough for his work, and to sire kids, so that was that. “Guess they were wrong.”  
  
There was just enough wiggle room for Dorian to press his forehead against the Bull’s chest. It felt nice. The Bull wrapped his arms more securely around him, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. That felt nice, too- everything did. The whole moment seemed wrapped in something warm and fuzzy, inviting them to just sit there and breathe against one another.  
  
“That really made it into the propaganda?” he asked finally.   
  
“At least one piece of it,” Dorian admitted. “Which I saw, and then was inspired to go on a tour of the tiny illicit bookshop of the red-lantern district.” There’s a pause, the sort that signals that Dorian’s deciding how to best say what comes after that. “There may have also been a toy.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“I don’t still have it,” Dorian added swiftly. “I left it behind on the Alexius estate when I had my falling out with Gereon. It wasn’t there when I returned, and I don’t particularly wish to contemplate where it might have gone.”  
  
“But you did look for it?” the Bull teased.   
  
Dorian grumbled, and smacked him on the shoulder. The Bull laughed, and settled back against the pillows, taking Dorian with him.   
  
He could probably pull out now, but that seemed like a waste of energy, and of time.   
  
It was the second time they’d been to this villa. The first time since they’d bought the place. The bed was draped in webbing to keep out the bugs, and the window was cracked open, letting in the sound of a hooting owl: _gu guu guuk_.  
  
Dorian had to leave in the morning. The Bull would keep him with him, while he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/16181.html?thread=62162229#t62162229): "Qunari have knots, the Iron Bull knows it. Theoretically. His never swelled during sex, and he's no stranger to fucking so he just assumes that knotting is something that happens to other people. Until one day he's fucking Dorian and feeling sorta off, like he just realized something important but can't put a finger on what exactly, and whoops, they're tied. How the fucking this could have happened?"


	35. Magister, No

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sequel to "Magister, Please", in which you could say that Dorian *puts on sunglasses* cockblocks a vote.

Though she did not condone the attack on Magister Pavus life, she could admit, privately and to herself only, that it would have made her life easier if it had succeeded, or at least failed at little less spectacularly. 

This vote had already been delayed by an endless march of Laetans and other Lucerni Magisters with bits of minutia and protocol to bog down the proceedings. It was now a full month after they were to supposed to vote upon the matter of allow foreign mages to indenture themselves for longer periods should they wish to bring family members across the border.

The Lucerni were against this expansion of the indenture system, and had the backing of the surprising number of people who had been through it. Alas, most of those people barely rated as bureaucrats or enchanters, rather than magisters, so the proposal had been likely to pass until all the agitation had begun. 

And then it had escalated, from violent clashes with the Templars to this botched kidnapping of Magister Pavus, to the hurriedly-produced propaganda denouncing him as a Qunari sympathizer, to _this_.

Pavus was clearly not fully recovered from his ordeal. There was a gash of pink skin down his side, there were still greenish-yellow bruises visible around his neck, and he had only walked into the Magisterium with the aid of a cane. It might seem heroic if it weren’t for the fact that he was using that cane to draw their attention to the oversized cock in the large etching he was currently speaking about. 

“Really now, this is the size of my entire leg,” Pavus said. “If I’d taken anything that large, I wouldn’t need a cane, I’d need a stretcher.”

There were a surprising number of etchings. This was etching number- she glanced down at the secretary’s notes- number fourteen. There were at least a dozen more. 

No, there were more than a dozen. One of his apprentices had just entered and was carrying several more. 

“I must give Magister Ineni points for his inclusion of the nipple piercings I wore in my youth,” Pavus continued, nodding at his apprentice as she set the load down. “It gladdens my heart to see that he remembers them in such fond detail, over a decade later.”

Given his nortorious predelictions, and the stories of his rescue by some wild Tal-Vashoth that lead to the current whispers of being a sympathesizer, it was inevitable that many of the propaganda pieces denouncing him be pornographic in nature. What no one had anticipated was that Magister Pavus would expend the effort from his sickbed to have several pieces blown up in size, and the originals traced back to the commissioning party. They had certainly not anticipated that he would spend his first day back critiquing the artistic merits of every piece, and yet here they were. 

“And now we come to one of my absolute favorites. I realize that the proper name of this piece is likely “Menace from the North” but I’ve been thinking of it as “The Beast With Three Backs” or more to the point “Fucking Atop A Dragon”. I hope you’ll forgive the presumption inherent in the retitling, Magsiter Uthar.”

Oh merciful Maker, here came his _other_ apprentice, carrying an even bigger stack of engravings. 

“Might Magister Pavus be persuaded to put his critiques on hold?” Minerva asked, somewhat desperately. If he stopped talking for long enough, then he would yield the floor. If he yielded the floor, then they could finally call this to a vote. 

Pavus barely paused for breath. “If Madam President requires a respite, then there are enough magisters present that her presence is not strictly required. And, at any rate, I would like to discuss the fanciful horns on this particular Qunari, particular the fact that they bear a great resemblance to his dick.”

Minerva did require a respite from the dicks, both artistic and metaphorical. She left, heading off to the balcony in which several slaves were serving coffee and hot buns. 

She selected a cup for herself, tested for poison, and had just settled down to attempt to relax when she caught sight of Maevaris Tilani. 

She could remember when the biggest source of strife was the matter of what Tilani would do next. She missed those days. 

She took her coffee and went to sit down next to the Lucerni leader. 

“I don’t suppose you could call him off,” Minerva asked. 

“Hardly,” Tilani replied. “And why would I want to?”

“Because you worked so hard to find a compromise that would lessen the impact of the original bill, and if he doesn’t shut up soon, we will have to shelve the matter entirely for five years.”

Tilani hummed noncommittally, and sipped her coffee. 

“You can’t seriously be implying that you want this to happen,” Minerva said. 

Tilani said nothing, but continued to sip her coffee. 

“There hasn’t been a filibuster in centuries,” Minerva protested. 

“I am imagine it’s rare to find a magister who loves his country and the sound of his own voice with as much zeal as Dorian does,” Tilani replied. 

She continued to sip her coffee. 

“But why?” Minerva demanded. 

“Because I expect the make up of the Magisterium to change drastically over the next five years,” Tilani replied. “As anyone with eyes might presume it would. And I am willing to gamble that the way it looks is far more amenable to my politics than it looks now.”

She took another, damnably calm, sip. Minerva downed hers in one go, scalded her throat, and returned back to the Magisterium’s floor. 

“Ah, Madam President,” Pavus greeted her. “You’re just in time to witness this disappointment, which seems to have forgotten that I possess a penis. Really, Magister Kehedron, you could have consulted with your husband, he was rather thoroughly acquainted with said member some years ago, before I had standards.”

It would have been unprofessional to walk directly back out of the Magisterium. She waited through three more etchings before retreating back to her office, and pouring herself a generous portion of Antivan brandy.


End file.
